meeting. Mom was at the kitchen table worrying over her plans for the Veterans Day float along with her first thoughts for the Christmas Pageant.
To keep me supplied for the trick-or-treaters, Mom had made up a batch of candied apples and popcorn balls. All I had to do was drop them into the outstretched paper sacks of whatever ghouls or goblins came knocking. The kids who showed up reminded me of myself, just four or five years back. I had usually gone out on Halloween nights with Roy Lee because he had a knack for causing excitement. Occasionally, we’d trick our treaters just for the fun of it. It was innocent stuff—knocking on doors and running, or soaping windows. When we were in the fourth grade, we got caught soaping windows at Bunky Smith’s house on Substation Row. After he reported us to the authorities, which meant our mothers, Roy Lee and I spent the next day washing every one of Bunky’s windows. “Boy, we had fun, though,” Roy Lee had snickered while we worked under the close supervision of Mrs. Smith. I told Roy Lee to shut up. Mrs. Smith rewarded my snottiness by giving my behind a good swat with a folded newspaper. When I told Mom on her for doing it, Mom just laughed and said, “She should have used a board.”
For years, the Coalwood school had held an annual company-sponsored Halloween party where nearly everyone in town showed up. There were always prizes, usually cakes and cookies, given for the best costume. It was part of the family legend that, before I was born, Mom had gone as a hillbilly, complete with red long johns. She’d pranced around the stage singing about Mountaineers being always free (it was our state motto: Montani Semper Liberi) while she received a long, careful appraisal from the judges. She’d also gotten some whoops from the men in the crowd until their wives shushed them, principally because no one had instructed Mom that she might need to button the trap door in her men’s underwear. She won the judging, of course. Two years ago, our Ohio owners had ordered the company not to support the carnival any longer, and a Coalwood tradition had died.
A few children came to our door early, dressed in a variety of homemade costumes. Witches were popular with the little girls—a black dress, a glued-together cardboard pointy hat, an old broom, and a painted nose wart was their standard costume. The boys were mostly cowboys—plenty of cap pistols and cowboy hats around town—or ghosts in bedsheets or devils in cardboard horns and dyed-red pajamas. The little kids were cute, but they were also sparse. Coalwood was getting older. In the rest of the United States, the so-called baby boom was still in grade school, but in Coalwood ours was just about busted. The school classes younger than mine were all smaller. A lot of the young men back from World War II and Korea hadn’t come home to West Virginia to work in the mine. Once they were out, they had stayed out.
It was around 10:00 P.M., a time when Coalwood’s trick-or-treaters were usually home safely in bed, that I heard a nearly inaudible tapping on our aluminum storm door. When I opened it, I found on our front stoop a half dozen or so children dressed as ragged urchins. I didn’t recognize any of them. “Trick or treat!” they yelled. Their voices were shrill and oddly anxious. Then, when I took a second look, I realized they weren’t wearing costumes at all.
I gave them all the candy and apples I had left and then went into the kitchen. I got a big grocery sack and emptied out all the cookies Mom kept in the drawer beside the sink. She looked up from her drawings and lists. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked tiredly.
“More kids than we thought,” I mumbled.
“At this hour? Well, I’ll bet they’re just coming around again. I made plenty of treats. Let me take a look.” She went to the front door with me close behind. The huddled kids shrank away from her. “Oh, my,” she said. Her hand
To keep me supplied for the trick-or-treaters, Mom had made up a batch of candied apples and popcorn balls. All I had to do was drop them into the outstretched paper sacks of whatever ghouls or goblins came knocking. The kids who showed up reminded me of myself, just four or five years back. I had usually gone out on Halloween nights with Roy Lee because he had a knack for causing excitement. Occasionally, we’d trick our treaters just for the fun of it. It was innocent stuff—knocking on doors and running, or soaping windows. When we were in the fourth grade, we got caught soaping windows at Bunky Smith’s house on Substation Row. After he reported us to the authorities, which meant our mothers, Roy Lee and I spent the next day washing every one of Bunky’s windows. “Boy, we had fun, though,” Roy Lee had snickered while we worked under the close supervision of Mrs. Smith. I told Roy Lee to shut up. Mrs. Smith rewarded my snottiness by giving my behind a good swat with a folded newspaper. When I told Mom on her for doing it, Mom just laughed and said, “She should have used a board.”
For years, the Coalwood school had held an annual company-sponsored Halloween party where nearly everyone in town showed up. There were always prizes, usually cakes and cookies, given for the best costume. It was part of the family legend that, before I was born, Mom had gone as a hillbilly, complete with red long johns. She’d pranced around the stage singing about Mountaineers being always free (it was our state motto: Montani Semper Liberi) while she received a long, careful appraisal from the judges. She’d also gotten some whoops from the men in the crowd until their wives shushed them, principally because no one had instructed Mom that she might need to button the trap door in her men’s underwear. She won the judging, of course. Two years ago, our Ohio owners had ordered the company not to support the carnival any longer, and a Coalwood tradition had died.
A few children came to our door early, dressed in a variety of homemade costumes. Witches were popular with the little girls—a black dress, a glued-together cardboard pointy hat, an old broom, and a painted nose wart was their standard costume. The boys were mostly cowboys—plenty of cap pistols and cowboy hats around town—or ghosts in bedsheets or devils in cardboard horns and dyed-red pajamas. The little kids were cute, but they were also sparse. Coalwood was getting older. In the rest of the United States, the so-called baby boom was still in grade school, but in Coalwood ours was just about busted. The school classes younger than mine were all smaller. A lot of the young men back from World War II and Korea hadn’t come home to West Virginia to work in the mine. Once they were out, they had stayed out.
It was around 10:00 P.M., a time when Coalwood’s trick-or-treaters were usually home safely in bed, that I heard a nearly inaudible tapping on our aluminum storm door. When I opened it, I found on our front stoop a half dozen or so children dressed as ragged urchins. I didn’t recognize any of them. “Trick or treat!” they yelled. Their voices were shrill and oddly anxious. Then, when I took a second look, I realized they weren’t wearing costumes at all.
I gave them all the candy and apples I had left and then went into the kitchen. I got a big grocery sack and emptied out all the cookies Mom kept in the drawer beside the sink. She looked up from her drawings and lists. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked tiredly.
“More kids than we thought,” I mumbled.
“At this hour? Well, I’ll bet they’re just coming around again. I made plenty of treats. Let me take a look.” She went to the front door with me close behind. The huddled kids shrank away from her. “Oh, my,” she said. Her hand
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