When you were a kid, what mischievous things did you do the night before Hallowe'en?
When you were a kid, what mischievous things did you do the night before Hallowe'en?
When I was a kid, the night before Hallowe'en was when we would go out and do pranks and tricks on people. We didn't damage anything, or do graffiti, but some things were not nice at all. For example, the worst thing I did was to put a bb into the valve cap of a tire so that it would slowly leak. The problem is that I felt guilty about it afterwards.
My friends and I would stand on both sides of the road posing as if we were tightly holding a rope across the road, and cars would stop thinking there was a rope there, and then we'd run, but that was tame.
However, the most creative mischievous thing I can recall was this. There was a grumpy old man who lived a couple of houses away from me who was always mean to us, never answered his door on Hallowe'en to give us candy, so he was our target. Previously I had found in the Westinghouse dump (which I went to for the purpose of finding interesting electronic things and glass tubes) a spool of very fine but strong thin black wire. We tied the thin almost invisible but strong wire to his door knocker, and hid with the other end in the bushes about 100 feet away. We jerked the wire to make his door knocker work as if someone at the door would normally do. He came to the door, saw nobody, looked around a bit and went back inside. We waited a few minutes, and did it again. He opened the door, saw nobody, and we could see he was getting mad, in fact he shouted that we were all going to get into trouble and went back inside. Then in a few minutes we did it again, but he was standing right inside the door, pulled it open immediately and was shocked that nobody was there, but he looked at the knocker and found the wire, so we immediately disappeared.
Where you grew up, was doing pranks the night before Hallowe'en customary, and if it was, what mischievous things did YOU do?
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Where you grew up, was doing pranks the night before Hallowe'en customary, and if it was, what mischievous things did YOU do?
When I was a kid automatic garage door openers were rare to nonexistant especially in my neighborhood. My dad was a garage door tech and we had just about the first one around. It was funny to wait until the trick or treaters got right up to the garage and hit the activation button. The door would start to open by itself and the kuds would run screaming.
I can just imagine it. LOL
When I was a tween, my cohorts and I would sneak into this man's pumpkin patch and make off with some. We were all dressed in black and had sneaking down to an art. We never got caught. I found out many years later that the patch belonged to a friend of my father who paid him ahead of time for the pumpkins. He never told me how he knew what I was up to.
Now THAT'S sneaky. LOL
We would glean the corn fields for left over corn after it had been picked. After we picked a couple of bushels, we would spend evenings after school shelling it so it could be thrown at houses and left in mail boxes.
Sounds like a "country" thing to do. At least it wasn't a "core" issue.
Buzz, don't ask what was done with the "cores". That too is a country thing.
I never did a lot but my dad had a few good ones.. He was born in 1916, so his "Halloweening Days" were mostly in the 1920's. Back then, most people outside the major cities used outhouses. A favorite sport was turning them over (extra points if someone was inside). My dad and his buddies (plus six brothers) thought that to be old hat. Besides, they had a neighbor who was looking for it, having been the victim in prior years. Then they hit on something new. I think that one of them must have been reading about Africa and the means they used over there to catch large dangerous animals (actually, knowing my uncles, it surprises me that any of them could read). Instead of overturning the neighbor's outhouse, they simply moved it back five feet and covered the hole with straw matting and a layer of dirt. When the distracted neighbor came out the next morning, the results were as could be expected.
That was a really shitty thing to do. LOL
Buzz,
Much later, when I was a police officer, my partner (the one mentioned in private grp who just died) and I were working a local festival. It had a beer tent with a long row of port a potties in back. Some kids turned one over (with the door down) with someone inside. My partner had gloves on, so he turned it over so the door was up. Then he suggested that I get up on it to help the occupant out. Like hell, I was going to do that with my bare hands. I got up there and held out the end of a nightstick for him to grab. Luckily, he wasn't too drunk to hold on to it or he'd still be in there.
It seems that outhouses and porta-potties are likely targets for mischief. LOL
Was it the Clint Eastwood movie "The Unforgiven" where someone got shot using the outhouse?
I think that was the movie where it happened, but it almost happened to my dad in real life. He was a Seabee (Naval Construction Battalion) on the island of Samar in the Philippines during WWII. The Navy built their latrines on poles over the water just off shore. He was in one and had just finished doing his thing. When he reached down for the toilet paper on the floor, a hole appeared in the canvas covering just where his chest would have been. He told me that he set a record for getting out of there and then sprayed the local palm trees down with a BAR until something fell out of one that wasn't a coconut. Apparently, when the potty prank involved a rifle, the penalty went way up.
Well, I guess only 5 or 6 of us were naughty kids. Could the rest of the NT membership possibly have been innocent little angels or sissy kids?
Did my fair share of soaping car windows, shaving cream on door handles. Been know to have toss a few dozen eggs in my youth.
BTW, shaving cream used to spell words on Florida lawn will kill grass, leaves words behind...for a long time!
Okay, the lawn thing, that's really naughty.
It was not one of my prouder teen moments. A few of us girls were "getting back" over a boyfriend issue
Had no idea the grass would die. Her daddy was not a happy camper...covered it up with dirt and grass seed. Swore each other to secrecy...I've violated my vow today!!
None. Never hung with kids who thought throwing eggs at cars or houses was cool. I knew kids that did, but me and my friends never did.
A few years ago I was walking my dog in the park down the street , on Halloween night, and I heard a commotion off to the left. There was a group of teenagers running from in front of a house down the street that runs parallel to the park. I walked toward the house and saw eggs splattered all over the front. A few seconds later a woman came out the front door, she was crying. "What happened , who did this ?" she cried. I told her a bunch of kids did it and ran away. "What did I ever do to them?" she pleaded, tears still rolling down her cheeks.
Made me a little glad inside that I had never done egg throwing when I had the chance.
No mischief ever? Then you were SUCH a good little boy.
By the way, where I lived we didn't do egg-throwing - that's REALLY mean.
selling houses, take a "House for Sale" sign and put it in different yard.