Image Credit: Hanna Peters (In the image are Hanna, her younger brother Luke, and her younger sister Teresa at the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival back in September of 2014.)
I have very fond memories of Halloween when I was younger, but to me, it wasn’t ever just about trick-or-treating; it was about a lot more. For me, trick-or-treating meant that I got to go to my Pap’s house, and the people in his neighborhood always handed out the best candy. There was one year when my dentist, who lived a few houses down from my Pap’s, handed out toothbrushes, and year after year, I would always joke with him that I was sad he wasn’t handing them out again. What kid doesn’t want candy on Halloween?
Another memory from Halloween was of a year when a group of teenagers trick-or-treating knocked on my Pap’s front door, expecting to get a lot of candy. However, that year we were pretty short on things in the candy bowl because my Pap had decided to hand out treat bags to the kids that year, and he didn’t want to hand out candy to the teenagers.
The most classic part of Halloween was the awesome candy bowl my Pap had. It was a big orange bowl with a witch’s hand sticking out of the top of it that would talk and grab your hand whenever you tried to reach in and grab candy. As a kid, I always thought it was the coolest thing because I had never seen anything else like it before.
Aside from the iconic candy bowl, there are more fun Halloween memories I have to share, like the time I dressed up as a Wheeling Central cheerleader, and despite attending high school at Wheeling Park, it was one of my favorite costumes I ever wore as a kid. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a cheerleader when I got into high school because I thought it would be awesome, but that was before I found out how hard tumbling was. Honestly, to this day, I think it’s unbelievable the number of tricks cheerleaders can do because, honestly, I don’t think I could ever do what they do. However, I did get to attend cheerleading camp as a kid for Wheeling Central, and it was a lot of fun learning from the cheerleaders on my favorite high school football team. And yes, despite attending a few Wheeling Park games in high school, I was still always rooting for the Maroon Knights at Wheeling Central.
Like most little girls, I wore many different costumes over the years, but one of my favorites was during my eighth-grade year when I dressed up as a 1950s girl. I had a little white short-sleeved sweater, a white cardigan, a pink poodle skirt, a white pair of canvas sneakers, and my hair up in a ponytail tied with a ribbon. I looked like a real 1950s girl in my costume, which is ironic, thinking back on that now, because the 50s are one of my favorite decades ever.
Carving pumpkins was always one of my favorite parts of October because my dad was always very creative when he was carving them. Our pumpkins had various names depending on their size and the face he would carve in them. For some reason, my brother, sister, and I asked him one year if he could start naming pumpkins, and ever since then, that tradition has stuck. I never liked getting pumpkin goo on my hands, but I did enjoy the process of watching my dad do it.
Candy trading was a big part of life for my sister and I when we were younger. She liked weird candy, like Skittles, while I preferred candy like M&M’s. Although I am not a big chocolate person today, I have always liked M&M’s. There was also the secret trading of Halloween candy when I was back in elementary school, too, but people never want to mention that.
Boo at the Zoo was another Halloween tradition that I was always fond of, especially the scary train rides at the Oglebay Good Zoo. It was scarier back when I was a kid than it is now because there were people who used to jump out and scare you. The train ride would take you through a wooded area so that the people would hide behind trees and bushes. One year, I remember my sister jumped out and yelled at the kids who were trying to scare her, and she said, “Boo! I’m not scared of you.” And that is a moment that I will never forget.
I cannot end this article without talking about my favorite fall festival when I was growing up. The Pumpkin Festival in Barnesville, Ohio, is an autumn festival unlike any other because the entire town of Barnesville is dedicated to celebrating pumpkins. The festival has a giant King Pumpkin that wins every year, and those are massive. I have always wondered how the farmers grow them because the size of them has always been amazing. There are games, rides, wonderful food, a craft fair that takes up an entire high school gym, and so many more things about the festival that I love. But my favorite part was always ending the night with pumpkin pie ice cream from Kirke’s. It was pumpkin-flavored ice cream with graham cracker crust pieces in it, and it always tasted out of this world, even on a cool autumn day in late September.
This is a picture of Hanna when she was one and a half years old, sitting next to some pumpkins.
This was written by our founder and editor-in-chief, Hanna Peters.
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