“Pumpkins and all that bullshit…”
Check David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet blog-post “Why Do We Celebrate Halloween?.” Here’s some excepted answers from his conversations with residents of the Duplex Nursing Home, Jamaica Plain, MA, 1980:
WALTER KIERAN: Christ! Nobody knows that! I don’t even know myself! I bet you can’t tell me where Halloween originated. It started up in Salem, with the witches. The kids go around and knock on the doors and they have to give ’em something to get rid of ’em.
GEORGE MacWILLIAMS: Damn if I know. I’m not interested in that stuff. It’s a kids holiday, they enjoy it.
WILLIAM “FERGIE” FERGUSON: On account of the clowns.
KEN EGLIN: I don’t know, honest-to-god. You can ask me all about Halloween and I don’t know, I swear to God I don’t know. It has something to do with Salem. What do you call ’em — witches, spooks? I guess we celebrate it for the spirits, witches, scarin’ people. I used to put a sheet on and cover my head and stand behind a big tree. Now this is gonna sound silly to you, but I’m serious. I used to scare the shit out of all the girls. I didn’t have anything on them, they were smarter than I was. I used to ask them things, and I couldn’t stand them. I’d scare them and they’d run home screamin’ to their mothers! Pumpkins and all that bullshit.
“The Duplex Planet is an ongoing work designed to portray a wide variety of real characters who are old or in decline.” Much more “Why Hallowen?” at the DP Blog.
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