I was on the lucky end of my mother’s need to be creative.
As a homemaker of the 50’s, she channeled her extreme talent into all the typical housewiferly expectations, among which was Halloween Costume Creation.
At the first mention of “back-to-school”, Mom would start to plot her course toward the Best Halloween Costume Ever, needing only to surpass her last years creation.
Mom was first and foremost an Efficiency Expert. If there was a better, faster, less expensive way to do something, she would figure out that angle and proceed from there. She single handedly invented multipurposing and multitasking. Really.
“If you do something efficiently, then you don’t have to work so hard,” Mom would say to me, trying to convince me that she was really lazy. I knew better. Mom just wanted to be The Cleverest Person on Earth.
“Why use something once and then throw it away?” she would add, meaning we weren’t spending much on costumes again this year. Mom also wanted to be The Most Frugal Person on Earth.
“What are we going to be?” I asked, wiggly with anticipation.
“We are going to be The Three Blind Mice!” Mom announced excitedly.
“How can we do that?” I questioned, “I only have one sister.”
“Your father is going to be The Third Mouse!”
Mom was talented, but I thought she was really stretching plausibility with the notion that my stodgy old father (he was maybe 40, but at the time, to me, he was old and stodgy) was going to play the third of The Three Blind Mice.
“And I am going to be the Farmers Wife!” was her final pronouncement.
This I had to see.
Little by little, piece by piece Mom’s genius costumes came together.
Mom had found these preposterous transparent half masks that were just round chubby cheeks and bucked teeth at the five and dime. I think they cost 39 cents each. Four of them set her back less than a buck seventy five. That was Mom’s idea of spendy.
Trying on that goofy half mask in the store, and looking at herself in the mirror and becoming semi hysterical as a result, was enough to get Mom’s Creativity in full gear.
With a touch of grey paint and some black pipe cleaner whiskers, they became Mouse Faces. Mom made giant round Blind Mice glasses out of used manila file folders, and glued in black paper ‘lenses’ with eye hole slits cut into them. They weren’t the easiest to see out of, but then again, we were supposed to be the Three Blind Mice.
Living in a New Jersey climate, Halloween could be one of many varying weather conditions on the night of Trick or Treat. It was usually Trick, with freezing, blowing, cold and rain being the norm.
Mom was ready. Her Mice may be Blind, but they were not going to freeze on Halloween.
She bought all three of us… ( Yes, three. She had conned my father into being the Third Blind Mouse. I don’t know how. Maybe she promised him first pick of the trick or treat candy… ) … yes, all three of us, mouse grey colored balbriggan pajamas, onto which she whipstitch sewed mouse tails in the appropriate places. Our tails were more than aesthetic attachments. We were instructed on the night of Trick or Treating to hold onto each others tails to simulate our blind dependence, and to keep us from wandering away from one another and spoiling the Three Blind Mice effect she had created. The tails were made of dark grey braided knitting wool, which later became our winter mittens that she knitted.
Yes, she did.
Damned Clever, huh? And Frugal, too.
We each carried a ‘cane’ for tap tap tapping our way along. Daddy had been coached on how to cut out our shaped masonite canes in his woodshop.
We were each given a shiny tin cup to carry, for effect. We were instructed to hold out our tin cups and say “Trick or Treat’ after we knocked on the front door of candy providing residences. The cups were later used as measuring cups for various household uses… measuring flour and sugar, or scooping laundry soap from the box.
Mom made signs to hang from our necks advertising our plight of “blind”, made from more used manila file folders and strands of dark grey wool, to loop the signs over our necks.
I recall that she had written on the back of one “blind” sign, “I’ll have a cheese sandwich”.
I didn’t “get it” at the time. I was interested in chocolate candy, not cheese sandwiches!
Mom donned her green wrap around skirt and an old apron, wore an unpainted half mask of chubby cheeks with bucked teeth, sported a stringy hair piece from last Halloween that poked out from underneath her babushka kerchief, and carried a over sized masonite ‘carving knife’, also made by Daddy as per instruction in the woodshop, perfect for cutting off Blind Mice Tails.
We were a sight, as it were.
It was a successful night of Trick or Treating, with our tin cups filled to capacity, and then emptied, after each shouting of Trick or Treat, into my mother’s apron that she had rigged as a candy satchel.
I remember my father getting first dibbs on the Snickers bars.
We slept in those pajamas all winter, of course minus the tails that my mother un-sewed from the appropriate places, and knitted into mittens.
The following year, I had grown some, so my mother dyed my fathers mouse grey pajamas a brown color, and I got a doggie mask with long ears. Mom reattached a fluffy tail to the seat of the PJ’s, in the appropriate place, and I was good to go for another year. Woof!
We retired all Pj’s shortly after that. They lingered in the bottom of the PJ drawer for a few years, and then eventually made it to the rag bag. Balbriggan cloth made for some good dust rags.
I found it hard not to hum Three Blind Mice while I dusted with those mouse grey rags.
I wonder if Mom had planned it that way?
Leslie
Hey! Hey! I have that black cat and pumpkin print!!!! Cool.
So how old were you when you were one of the blind mice? And please tell me you have a picture – somewhere. That’s too cute. My mother was also a sewing queen (I still have her 1948 Singer and won’t use anything else) – and made matching dresses for herself, my sister, me. Usually nice plaid shirtdresses. A precursor to gang colors maybe? I definitely felt like I belonged.
Comment by Regina — October 22, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
Ah, Leslie. A story to make me smile tonight. Thanks.
We didn’t do much for Halloween but one year my cousin and I combed our long hair over our faces and put everything on backwards, including the masks on the back of our heads. Some sort of false feet sticking out from our heels. A family friend always called us gremlins and when we arrived at his door he said, “Hmmm, I smell gremlins!” We thought he must be magic to recognize our smell. Of course she had bright red hair and my sort of blonde hair. Ha. One house, the rich folk, gave a whole Hershey bar and a cup of cocoa. So we always went there last. Most people gave penny candy or apples in those OLD days.
Comment by Jo Castillo — October 22, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
Pictures!? Your mom had some great ideas!
I miss a proper Halloween :/
Comment by Jennifer Rose — October 23, 2008 @ 3:47 am
Regina,
Ha! Gang colors!
My grandmother had a foot powered treadle Singer that was to die for. She made all of her clothes on it.
Mom was more of a costume designer/creator rather than a sewer.
(OK. “Mom was not a sewer”. What’s wrong with that image?)
I was probably about 7 or 8, which made my very very old father 37 or 38. Geeez, that was old, right?
And folks…no pictures. There were even preliminary sketches that my mother made of the costumes (done on typewriter paper) that are long, long gone.
I have mental snapshots…
Comment by leslie — October 23, 2008 @ 6:58 am
Hi Jo,
Ah, the good OLD days!
Those sounded like some clever costumes! I bet it looked weird with the two of you “walking backwards”.
That’s funny about sniffing out ‘gremlins’.
Isn’t it amazing how smart we thought we were as kids, until we became grown ups and realized that they knew what we were up to all the time?
I thought my mother had eyes in the back of her head (she said so) but she was using the reflection of the glass from pictures on the wall to keep track of me.
Comment by leslie — October 23, 2008 @ 7:05 am
Jennifer,
No pictures. Just fun memories.
I can still “see” the brown pajamas in the pajama drawer.
We lived in the country, and had to be driven to Trick or Treat houses, usually our Grandparents house, or friends. I never had the opportunity to plunder door to door with impunity. If I had, I would have been a pirate, or a cowboy stagecoach robber…”hand over your jewels!”
Comment by leslie — October 23, 2008 @ 7:08 am
when we were really young we lived on a street with 4 townhouse blocks. We got lots of candy those years, but we did move to the country when I was 13 so trick or treating stopped :/ The Mennonite family across from us, while they were great people didn’t do Halloween. Trick or treating by horse carriage would have been cool
Comment by Jennifer Rose — October 23, 2008 @ 8:18 am
Now that’s an example of how being frugal makes you more creative. Bet your memories wouldn’t be so clear and so sweet if you’d gone to a costume shop and paid a fortune …
Comment by Debi — October 24, 2008 @ 5:43 am
Your mother was so cool and creative. I envy you your parents. What a wonderful memory you have expressed. Happy Hallowe’en.
Comment by Ian Lidster — October 24, 2008 @ 8:49 am
Jennifer,
Living away from a neighborhood environment really put the kibosh on candy collection! At school the day after Halloween, the kids that lived in heavily populated areas would talk about having to drop off their pillowcase sacks of candy at their houses a few times, before going back out for more!!
Poor darlin’s!
Comment by leslie — October 24, 2008 @ 9:44 am
Debi,
Mom was ridiculously overloaded with creativity. She was frugal on top of that.
If that woman had had unlimited funds, the whole world would have had homemade costumes.
Mom could have singlehandedly outfitted all live Broadway performances and Hollywood productions on about $25 dollars! Ha!
Comment by leslie — October 24, 2008 @ 9:54 am
Ian,
Happy Hallowe’en to you, too!
Yep, I was one lucky kid.
Mom was like no one I have ever met.
She would have been 87 this November, and I just bet she would be a blogger.
She kept a written daily diary for over 40 years.
I started two diaries, with entries that don’t even make it to Valentine’s day!
Comment by leslie — October 24, 2008 @ 10:01 am
What very sweet memories… I love this story. Truly love it.
Yes, your mom is very clever! How fun!
I could see it all just as you said.
This was my treat, today.
Thank you.
Scarlett & Viaggiatore
Comment by Wanderlust Scarlett — October 24, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
Scarlett and Viaggiatore,
You are so very welcome.
Sometimes when I write this sort of thing down it seems made up.
But I really did have a very luxurious childhood, bejeweled with all the right things…manila folder spectacles, braided mouse tails, and a Daddy that would let my mother manipulate him for Snickers!
Comment by leslie — October 24, 2008 @ 6:10 pm