CHILDHOOD HALLOWEEN

      Origins  of Halloween are interesting. But I'm going to bore you with my childhood Halloween experience.

       For the most part there was nothing.

       My childhood was in the 40's and 50's. We lived in a rural area where everything was limited. Halloween treats were just not heard of. Even in the village kids did not go from house to house for treats. Most people didn't have the spare cash to buy candy. Going house to house for treats was not heard of. Farms were too far apart to go from house to house and transportation was limited. 

      In school we had a Halloween party in the afternoon. Some kids had costumes. The teacher used it for an art class. We bobbed for apples. That was it. 

     The main idea at that time was tricks and some of the tricks were not funny and damage was done. The idea was to scare people so various mysterious noises were made. The first kids who came to our house sneaked on to the yard. They had a small home made device that made a loud noise on the window. We were alarmed as we didn't expect anything. 

     In the village a common trick was to tip over the out houses and move things around from place to place. Since cars were not locked they were easily pushed from place to place. Someone could find their car at somebody else's house. In my first year of high school the police man came and got the boys to go around and tip  the outhouses back up. I was a little upset as I hadn't been with the gang to upset out houses. 

    So Halloween when I was a kid was much different than it is today. My first trick or treating was when I took my own kids out trick or treating. I remember one night that  was bitterly cold. They were young enough that I had to go with them. I was cold and wanted to go home. Not my two little pumpkins. They wanted to keep going and they did.

    Much has changed about Halloween in my life time.

New Trick for a Jack Rabbit

       I seem to be writing on jack rabbits fairly often. It's not because I particularly like jack rabbits or that I am an expert on them. It's just that the things are becoming much more common in my area and you see them several times a day. Sooner or later they do some trick and give me something to blog about.

 

      I was delivering papers this morning and visiting with my neighbor, Duane. As we were talking a jack rabbit bounced across the close and into Duane's yard. Then Duane told me his jack rabbit story.

    A few days before Duane had set up a sprinkler to water a very small area. He came back around the corner of the house to move the sprinkler and found a jack rabbit right beside the sprinkler. Duane stopped to observe the rabbit and noticed the the rabbit was drinking from the sprinkler. The rabbit watched the sprinkler oscillate and caught drops of water as they fell. Quick thinking Duane, went to the house for his camera. He also called his wife, Mavis,  to see the action. Mavis's comment was "unbelievable!"

     Not much is known about rabbits consumption of water. It's thought that they get most of their water from dew on the grass. Much of jack rabbit habitat is on arid prairie and they can be very far from bodies of water. I have seen them on new thin ice stamping their feet as if trying to break the ice to get at the water. They are  are also making a rather loud growling kind of noise as they are beating on the ice. Experts think that they see their reflection in the ice and think it's another rabbit and they are  trying to be aggressive and chase the other rabbit away.

      No matter what, this jackrabbit trick is a first for me and also for Duane and Mavis.