Pranks
rule 'olden
days'
celebrations
of Halloween
By
W. T. Block
Reprinted
from the
Beaumont
Enterprise,
October 31,
1998
NEDERLAND
-- If you
should run
into Albert
Rienstra,
Boots
Bodemuller or
John May,
please give
each of them a
stick of
candy, because
none of them
ever got to go
"trick or
treatin'" in
the "old
days." In 1930
Halloween
meant
pranksterism,
perhaps better
defined as
vandalism, and
"trick or
treating" was
"invented"
after World
War II to
modify that
style of
behavior.
During
the 1920s, it
was no
accident that
many outhouses
here were
built on
6-foot-by-6-foot
concrete
bases.
Typically,
Halloween
meant wooden
gates or
bridges over
ditches
stolen,
overturned
outhouses,
houses pelted
with rocks and
any other
vandalism that
teenagers
could
contrive.
And
it is
unbelievable
the amount of
time, trouble
and cost such
behavior
sometimes
entailed.
At
3 a.m. on
Halloween in
1936, several
Beaumont
Enterprise
carriers,
including me,
met at
Rienstra
Texaco
Station,
opposite
Nederland
Pharmacy, to
roll our
papers. We
were shocked
to see the two
entrances of
the pharmacy
completely
blocked by
debris.
During
the 1930s,
Nederland
Pharmacy had a
10-foot
overhead
wooden canopy
protecting the
sidewalk.
Several
teen-agers,
driving
Model-A Fords
and pulling
trailers,
worked all
night at a
garbage dump,
filling feed
sacks full of
tin cans and
old bottles,
and they
covered the
canopy and
sidewalk with
hundreds of
such sacks.
They
even brought
in two old car
bodies to
block the
entrances.
The
next morning,
the pharmacy
owner needed
to hire
several men
and trucks to
haul away the
garbage, and
it was
afternoon
before the
pharmacy could
open.
One
unusual prank
occurred about
1915.
In
early days
Nederland had
a section
foreman and a
crew of
railway
maintenance
men (called
"gandy
dancers") to
repair the
Kansas City
Southern
tracks. As a
result, piles
of wooden
crossties,
long trestle
timbers and
railroad iron
were stacked
on the north
side of the
depot. And an
old rice wagon
was also kept
there, for the
convenience of
store owners,
who needed to
unload boxcars
of cow feed,
lumber or
heavy
hardware.
On
Halloween
night, unknown
vandals built
an incline to
the depot
roof, using
trestle
timbers and
railroad iron,
and they
covered the
incline with
crossties. The
pranksters
then pulled
the rice wagon
up the incline
until the
wagon stood in
the middle of
the depot
roof.
Then
they carefully
dismantled the
inclined
bridge and
restacked the
crossties,
timbers and
railroad iron
in the same
previous
manner.
The
rice wagon
stayed on the
depot roof for
a couple of
months, with
no one
seemingly
knowing how to
get it down.
Finally
the railroad
sent a railway
crane to lift
the wagon off
the roof, and
the wagon
quickly
disappeared
from
Nederland.
Nowadays
I welcome the
"trick or
treaters" as a
much superior
mode of
behavior when
compared to
the
pranksterism
of the "olden
days."
W.
T. Block of
Nederland is a
historian and
author. His
website is
http://block.dynip.com/wtblockjr/. This database is very large (150
articles) and
is intended as
an area
history source
for students.
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