Halloween and Movies - Story time

I was told a while back to write down some of my life stories.  I've been thinking of where to start, and until now I was stuck on looking for one story that I had previously written.  But this month holds a holiday that my family did not celebrate like every other American family, we did have a small family party, but we did not Trick or Treat for Halloween.  Dressing up to go to the church Harvest Festival was a real treat, and did not happen that often.  Now most of my class mates teased me for not dressing up, but I liked how we celebrated much better.  First of all, since we did not dress up (with the exception of the church event) my mom would let us skip school that day.  I loved that, and then she would take us to the mall to get Mrs Fields cookies and Julius Cesar drinks.  My parents would then get us our favorite candy to eat, we'd make caramel apples and watch movies by firelight.  It seemed to rain quite often on Halloween.

Our movies got progressively scary as we got older.  So we started out with the Peanuts cartoon The great pumpkin.  Well it was not long before we began to watch Abbot and Costello's Meet Frankenstein. 

I happen to love this film, as I love all of their films.  But eventually this was just to funny and not scary at all, and so we then moved on to CharadeCharade, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in the Alfred Hitchcock film.  The suspense was great, and I just loved Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. 

I just watched this film tonight, it's a classic.  But eventually we did have to throw in another movie, I mean we did stay up later and need new things to keep it all interesting.  So we shook things up a bit by adding in another Audrey Hepburn film, this time it was Wait Until Dark. 

Wait Until Dark

This movie still has me jumping in surprise in one place, my DH laughs at me since he never jumps.  He really has only watched any of these to humor me, he'd rather not watch anything filmed before the 80's.  The next movie thrown in for fun, and to make it a double feature night was Death Trap, another suspense film. 

Video clip - Death Trap Trailer

Charade (1963) [Remastered Edition]

In my second grade year, I chose not to be checked out of school, it was the only year.  I went to school and watched the kids parade in their costumes.  I did not have a costume, and so my teacher kept trying to get me to do all the things the other kids were doing including dressing me in a costume.  I was very uncomfortable with that especially as this teacher and I already had bad blood between us.  The whole day was uncomfortable and I was actually defended by a friend of mine in the grade above me, Emily.  I can not remember the details, but I was unhappy and she came over and took care of the situation.

Now, I'm all grown up, and my DH grew up in a family that felt similarly about Halloween celebrations, and we have decided that our kids will go to the church celebrations, but not trick or treat, and I'm going to take them out of class that day and we will make our own memories.  I treasure those times, and even now I wish that I could take that day off, and not dress up for work, because now that I'm grown my employer feels the need to dress up for Halloween, and in an office of 10 you get noticed real quick when you don't do what the boss asks.  I miss my mom at Halloween, for our shopping trips and candy apple making times, and even when my sister and her made pumpkin seeds. I was not a big fan, and did not help much with that food item. 

I will get into greater detail in my stories in future posts, but for now these are some of my Halloween memories.