Posts from Stumpy in thread „It's Halloween“

Quote from ShortGrub

The one holiday overlooked is Thanksgiving. The one that points to thanking God and yet since there is not commercial value outside of selling a turkey it gets forgotten accept for football games and eating good food.

Thanksgiving is the only holiday I really enjoy because it's not commercialized nearly as much as the others and it's primarily an occasion for family members to gather and visit.

For many years the wife and I hosted big family reunions at Thanksgiving but since I don't cook and her age and health are no longer up to the task (when you cook a meal for 20 or 30 people, it turns into a lot of work), we've stopped having the family get-togethers at our house.

Quote from Robbie

I like this time of the year too, its a bit of fun and I love cold winter nights and how great everywhere looks in the Autumn.

Its when these festivals become overly commercial that is when the fun ends.

I love the weather this time of year - it's just the holidays I could do without. I don't even like Christmas because as Rob says, it along with the other holidays have become far too commercialized.

Quote from luckynedpepper

i will be sitting with all the lights off so the kids dont come trick or treating all night long. this halloween rubbish really does get my back up and id ban it if i could

I couldn't agree more.

The problem is my wife who, although she's 70 years old, enjoys that stuff more than the kids, I think. She loves all the holidays whereas I'm a Bah-Humbug sort.

Can't believe this - here I post about how we used to tip outhouses over on Halloween as a trick, figuring no one would know what an outhouse was. Now I find out many people on the board not only know what they are but have used them. Beg your pardon, folks, for assuming y'all were too young to know how us old codgers used to live. :teeth_smile:

Quote from ethanedwards

It's easy,we're all NUTS!!

Speak for yourself, Keith; it's all perfectly logical to me.

Quote from Elly

Hi All

I have read this post backwards! (newest first) and forgive me for saying so, but what has the D day landings, outhouses, "kids over here being soft" etc etc got to do with the subject it's halloween? not saying these things should not be discussed just curious as to where halloween went?

As my children think I am the wicked witch of the west, yesterday being "mums day" I was very busy trying to maintain my balance on my broomstick all night, so forgive me if my tired brain cannot make the connection :teeth_smile:

You appear to have tunnel vision, Elly.

Speaking of which...............

Quote from luckynedpepper

i bet most youngsters over here have never heard of D-Day and the Normandy landings

I'm ensuring that my grandkids are familiar with the heroes of WW2 by providing all of them with copies of "The Longest Day", "Battle of Britain" and other [fairly] accurate films dealing with the subject. And I'm drilling into their thick little skulls the huge debt we owe to "The Greatest Generation" for preserving our freedoms and way of life.

Quote from luckynedpepper

Stumpy,you are correct.When my Grandads were both away fighting in WW2 and everything was rationed here it must have been so hard for everyone.People nowadays aren't built of the same stuff as them.I see people in supermarkets piling stuff in their trolleys that they don't really need and i think to myself that they would never have survived as my Grandparents did during the war years.

Over here they've coined a term for the generation that fought in WW2 - they call it "The Greatest Generation".

We owe so much to them yet most people never give them a thought.

Quote from luckynedpepper

my old grandad used to say " its character building lad ! "

I know this sounds crazy, Ned, but I kinda agree with your grandad. IMO, we've become too "civilized" and in the process, it has softened us and destroyed our character. People just have it too damned easy nowadays.

Quote from ethanedwards

We used to have the Daily Mirror cut up into pieces, and hanging on a meat hook.
Amazing what we did with newspapers back then,
one minute we would be eating fish and chips from them,
and the next, they were hanging up in the outhouse!!!

I can think of a lot of newspapers in circulation today that I'd like to use for exactly that purpose.

I'm amazed - here I was thinking that the entire Free World had indoor plumbing no later than, say, about 1950 and now I learn it didn't.

Reminds me of an secretary I used to know in an office we shared during my last tour of duty in Deutschland. She was an old country girl from someplace in Missouri, just as I was an old country boy from Oklahoma/Texas, and we used to try to outdo each other in our stories of deprivation as youngsters - "I was poorer than you were"; "No, I was poorer than you were". Caused a lot of laughs among our co-workers.

Shows what I [don't] know! Here I was under the impression that those under 60 YO had never even heard of outhouses and now I discover that not only have they heard of 'em but have actually used 'em.

Learn something new every day.

Y'all better be careful the next time you're in one at Halloween. Some trick-or-treaters may tip it over 'cause you didn't give them a treat.

Forgive me, fellas, I had y'all figured for yuppie types and now I hear you're plain old country boys just like me.

Quote from ShortGrub

You don't grow up around the Amish and not know what an outhouse is. We would go camping at times during Halloween and we would stake out the girls bathrooms. They were non flush, pit bathrooms, with no electricity. We would rig up black wire around the toilet that would make the person sitting think an animal was in the bathroom with them. They would scream.
The next day all us lads were lined up by the men and spoken too for scaring the ladies. It was all show for our Dads all asked how we did it.

Did you use out-of-date Sears and Roebuck catalogs for toilet paper? :teeth_smile:

Oh, I forgot, baby boomers have no idea what an outhouse is. :whatchutalkingabout

Quote from ShortGrub

My Wife hands the candy out.

Lucky, if people in my neighborhood turned their lights out, we would egg their house, throw corn, and light a bag full of cow dung on their top step. They would come out and stomp the bag and get cow dung all over their shoes. Odd the next year they handed out candy.

We were bad as older kids. We would walk behind smaller kids and cut their bags and wait for the candy to fall out.

My penance is to give out really good candy now.:teeth_smile:

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I'm old enough that when I was a youngster, we had a lot of outhouses. One of the favorite tricks then was to turn over the outhouses, especially when they were occupied.

Once or twice when we were turning them over, one of us would fall in the hole. As you can imagine, the one who fell in was shunned the rest of the night.