“The young people in our neighborhood used to have parties,” said Grandma, “and they would make taffy and play games and perform tricks intended to reveal to them their future husbands and wives.
“Sometimes these parties would be broken up by a crowd of rough boys who had not been invited, for if there was a lot of fun on Hallowe’en there was also a lot of mischief done. Nothing that could be moved was safe if left outside. Gates were carried away, wheels removed from wagons, farm machinery hidden, well buckets stolen, and roads barricaded with great logs. Some people took this time to vent their spite on anyone they did not like.
“But these rough, mischievous boys had never bothered us, for between the settlement where they lived and our farm was a strip of woods in which an old woman known as Mother Girty had been buried years and years before—in pioneer times, in fact. It was said she had been a witch, and even when I was a little girl ignorant or superstitious folks did not like to pass these woods by night. On Hallowe’en they were more afraid than ever, since on this night witches are supposed to roam at will over the country.
“One year Mother said we could have a Hallowe’en party at our house. Charlie and I gave our biggest pumpkins, and Truman made jack-o’-lanterns out of them. Belle and Aggie decorated the sitting room with autumn leaves and bunches of yellow chrysanthemums and draped orange-colored cloth, which they had dyed by boiling old sheets in sassafras bark and water, around the walls. For lights they had the jack-o’-lanterns and just common lanterns with the orange cloth wrapped about the globes, and they put out baskets of apples and nuts. In the cellar were rows of pumpkin pies and pans of gingerbread for refreshment, when the guests should get tired of playing games and pulling taffy.
“When every one had come, Aggie made the taffy. But she didn’t cook the first batch long enough and it wouldn’t harden. They tried to pull it, but the way it stuck to their hands was awful, and such squealing and laughing you never heard. It kept Charlie and me busy bringing water for them to wash off the taffy.
“The girls put another kettle of molasses on right away, and while the taffy was being made Charlie and I slipped around the house to put a tick-tack on Mother’s window. When we had got the tick-tack to working and Mother and Father had both come to the window to see what it was, though I reckon they both knew very well, we started back to the kitchen.
“But we didn’t go in, for there, spread out on the porch to cool, were pans and pans of taffy. Charlie said we had better take a pan for ourselves for fear there mightn’t be enough to go around and we’d have to do without. So he grabbed a pan quickly and we ran around to the front of the house with it. We meant to go on the front portico, but just as we turned the corner we heard a noise as if some one were opening the door. So we crouched down close to the house for a little bit and then ran out to the lilac bush by the front gate.
“We sat down on the ground and began to work the cooler part of the taffy around the edge of the pan toward the center, but we had no butter to put on our hands to keep the taffy from sticking and I offered to go to the kitchen to get some. We would then start pulling our taffy and quietly slip into the house where everyone else would be pulling taffy and no one would notice that we had not been there all the time.