My Most Memorable Halloween:

It was the late 1960s, I was 10 or 11, living at Fort Ord, California (my dad was in the Army), and I wore this as part of my princess Halloween costume. Back in the day you could find cool things like chunky jewels and sweet-16-prom-type dresses at the Salvation Army or Goodwill for only a couple of bucks. My princess dress was poofy, green and covered in the prettiest lace. I wore it two Halloweens in a row because I loved it so much.

My friend Betty and I were at the last few houses, a grouping of 4, all facing one another, walking away from the last door we knocked on when all of a sudden 4 guys came running down the ice plant hill and one of them grabbed my pillow case full of candy. I was trying to hold on to it while one of them was flinging me around in circles, and Betty and I were screaming and crying for help. No one came out of their houses to help.

The bad thing is that they got my candy, bent the heck out of my ring and twisted it tight to my finger. But the good thing is that they didn’t see the filled-to-the-brim UNICEF box I held tight to my chest! A couple of my siblings went back out and trick-or-treated so I would have a little candy cause they were awesome like that, yo.

What’s your most memorable Halloween?

55 And Still Alive!

September 23rd I will be welcomed into the world of senior citizens. Double nickles. Old pooty.

The photo above is part of a greeting card book I saved when we cleaned out the remnants of my mother’s things. A lot of it was icky from being stored in the garage, so I went through it and tore out the pages on which my mom had written each of our names and years of birth. It was such an awesome thing to come across; I plan to send my brothers’ and sister’s their pages on their birthdays. It’ll be one of those bitter-sweet things, but I’m hoping more of the sweetness will shine through.

Tangent Memories

While cleaning out some stuff of my mom’s I saved a few old Christmas cards that were sent to her. I thought it would be neat to cut out just the signatures because many are from people are gone now. I sat down and actually followed through with my idea and put them into my Smash Book.

I like how it turned out and that I didn’t have to hang on to the entire card, just part of it, because that would have taken up lots of storage space I don’t have.