Memories of a citizen of Halloween Every October it’s my duty to point out that my hometown, Anoka, Minnesota, is known, at least in Anoka, as the Halloween capital of the world, and it puts on big parades and a football game, the Pumpkin Bowl. Even as a child, I felt that a town of 10,000 was overreaching to consider itself an international capital of anything, but I kept my thoughts to myself. It was a big deal, even if people in Russia or China were not aware of it. In 1953, I saw the last living Civil War veteran, Albert Woolson, ride in the parade, and one year Hubert Humphrey came. Our high school drum major Dickie Johnson was the proudest, struttingest, highest-baton-thrusting drum major you ever saw. When you saw him coming down Main Street, you imagined that Pope Pius, the Queen of England, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe might be coming along behind. This celebration was organized by the town fathers in the Twenties, after a rash of mischief-making, and in my youth I heard stories about that from men who claimed not to have been involved but whose information seemed to me firsthand, stories about disassembling a neighboring farmer’s Model T Ford and reassembling it on the roof of a machine shed. It was a great feat, accomplished silently in the dark, the neighbor’s dog etherized, and my father spoke admiringly of the deed though he denied responsibility. I’d guess he was present, however. He also, without claiming responsibility, talked about the Halloween custom of tipping over outhouses and seemed to have witnessed it. Most farms near the Keillor farm still relied on outhouses in the Twenties and Thirties and beyond, and people must’ve used them warily around Halloween. Perhaps they opted for chamber pots instead. But excretion is a personal matter and the outhouse offers greater privacy and so a person who feels colonic pressure might well opt to take a lantern and head for the little house out back. Read the rest of the column >>> | 