Monday, October 21, 2019

Sue B. Halloween, 1962!

I have a late addition to GDB, courtesy of Sue B., with two photos from her father, Lou Perry. These are family snapshots from 1962, featuring Sue herself when she was an adorable 2 year-old. I'm not sure how much most 2 year-olds understand about Halloween, but the idea of wearing costumes and getting bags full of free candy is all they need to know!

There's Sue, wearing her classic "Collegeville" cat mask. There was a whole costume that went with the mask (including a black hood that would have covered Sue's red hair), but it was meant for somebody twice as tall as she was.


Here's a color-corrected version. The "Trick or Treat" bag is awesome. Those pumpkins must have been the size of grapefruits; these days I like to carve a BIG pumpkin, though those can get expensive. 


Just for fun, I looked for a photo of the Collegeville costume box. I found several variations, presumably the one on the left is the older of the two.


So there's our Sue, looking pretty sassy! I'll bet her folks were having as much fun as she was, getting ready for the big night. It was probably a little early for the truly fun things, like throwing eggs at cars or TPing houses.


Another color-corrected masterpiece! Did Sue get her red hair from Lou? Or from her mom? Check out that nice mid-century cabinet behind her.


Many thanks to Sue. B for sharing Lou's Halloween photos with us!

20 comments:

Nanook said...

Major-

Ahhhhhhhhh..... !

Thanks, Major (& Sue).

TokyoMagic! said...

Sooooo cute! And I love the mid-century furniture and lamp!

Thank you Lou, Sue and the Major, too!

Andrew said...

These are so nice...and are made better because they're of someone I kind of feel like I know! Thanks for these today.

K. Martinez said...

These pics are really wonderful. So sweet. There's something special about kids in their Halloween costumes getting ready for the big night.

Thank you, Sue for sharing the Halloween photos of yourself and thank you too, Major.

Stu29573 said...

Very spooooooky! There was an innocence to the Halloween of my childhood (I'm two years younger than Sue, apparently) that I wish was still there. I can even remember getting homemade popcorn balls while trick or treating and thinking nothing about eating them! Sigh.....

JC Shannon said...

Talk about too cute for words! TokyoMagic! stole my mid century line, also the vintage trick or treat bag. Check out vintage Halloween stuff on Ebay. Very spendy. Thanks to Lou and Sue and Major.

DrGoat said...

What a nice treat to wake up to this morning. Cute as a bug and ready for Halloween. A big thanks, Sue and Lou and of course Major. Yeah Tokyo, I had my eye on Lou's lamp too.

Major Pepperidge said...

Nanook, I’m not sure how to respond to “Ahhhhhhh…!”, so I will just say “You’re welcome”!

TokyoMagic!, that furniture would be fashionable in any home today, which is kind of amazing.

Andrew, yes, I always like seeing photos from the personal collections of GDB regulars!

K. Martinez, I encourage people to check out your family Halloween pictures! See part 1 HERE, part 2 HERE, and part 3 HERE.

Stu29573, now that Halloween seems to last at least a month, it feels a little less special than when it really was that one big night. I don’t ever remember getting home-made treats in my bag, by then we were already aware of the bad things hat might be in them. Was that just an urban legend?

Jonathan, I used to follow a blog (I’ve forgotten its name) in which the author shared the insane prices that vintage Halloween stuff fetched these days. It really was nuts!

DrGoat, I told Sue people were going to like these! Sounds like some manufacturer needs to make new “stampeding horses” lamps.

Irene said...

Sue - what a cutie pie! And what gorgeous red hair. Is your hair still red? I am a bit (ha ha) older than Sue and my Mom always sewed my costumes. I remember I always asked to be a harem girl but she told me if I wore a costume like that I would have to wear a sweater over it - well then, what would be the point?!!! But the princess dresses she made were always winners :) Wish I had a picture to share but there are none! Home movies yes, photos no.

Nanook said...

Sue-

In that first image, I was wondering if the 'thick book' on the shelf could be either a telephone directory - or maybe a Sears, Wards, or Penney's catalog - with a 'Wish Book' atop of it-?

Anonymous said...

I recall those masks being so hot after running through the neighborhood with my friends trick-or-treating between 99-102 houses (yes I counted them every year). It was a special time and it's a shame so much of that innocence has been lost today. And even at the age of 11-12,I, and my friends, were without parental supervision while doing so. Somehow we survived just fine with the responsibility. KS

"Lou and Sue" said...

Thanks, all, for the sweet words! I see a dippy little kid, when I look at these pictures of myself. :)

Stu, we got homemade popcorn balls, too, but I don't think my mom let me eat them. I especially loved when people gave pennies! My mom would always eat my Snickers candy bars when I was sleeping.

Ken, I LOVE your robot costume and picture, btw!!

Irene, my hair kept turning darker over the years (with red highlights, which I still have) - except for the years right out of high school, when my mom finally let me "highlight" my hair. That's when I used blond highlight kits on my entire head. :) She had red hair so I know she wished I would've kept it natural, at the time.

Irene, you were so fortunate to have a mom that sewed your costumes! I wore a Raggedy Ann "Collegeville" costume in 2nd grade, while living in Chicago - and everyone else wore the Collegeville costumes there, too. But the next year, we had moved to the suburbs and I wore my Raggedy Ann custom again. I stood out like a sore thumb because every kid in my new class (and possibly the entire school) wore wonderful homemade costumes.

Am still trying to figure out why there is so much string on that mask of mine. And why my parents didn't remove it?! :)

That lamp was also a planter - I would hide little toys in it. I still have a couple of my parents' old lamps, but not this one, unfortunately. :( I wish I still had it.

Nanook, I don't know for sure what those books are - but they could be any of those that you mentioned.

KS, yes those were good times! When Halloween fell on a Saturday, we'd trick or treat all day - sometimes hitting the same houses more than once. ;)

Sue

Nanook said...

Sue-
I distinctly remember one Halloween (probably 1959), when each trick-or-treater received "A shiny, new penny-!", as the lady of the household proudly-proclaimed. Seems a trifle these times, but [not unsurprisingly] a penny bought a lot more than it does now - today, seemingly a mere 'curiosity' still around to handle sales taxes and for growing penny jar collections-!

Chuck said...

Sue, these are a real treasure. Thanks for sharing!

The first Hallowe'en I can remember was nine years later, when I was two. I had tiger-striped pajamas, and my mother bought me a tiger mask toe wear with them that may have been made on the same form as yours, just colored differently. I think we hit a grand total of maybe 10 houses that year. I remember it was still daylight.

I can remember that mask getting hot and humid when I wore it. That was the only year I ever wore a store-bought masks; all of my other costumes were either home-made, home assembled, or - in the case of my cowboy outfit - something my mother bought out of the Sears catalog for me to wear at Hallowe'en and then play in for months afterwards.

Nanook, 1959 would have been the first year for the Lincoln Memorial-backed pennies, so I can that being a big deal, particularly if she were a numismatist. Still kind of irritated my mother took all of my wheat pennies - some dating back to the '20s - and deposited them in the bank in a paper roll one day while I was at school.

Major Pepperidge said...

Irene, Sue seemed a little embarrassed by her red hair, and I told her there was nothing wrong with red hair! I guess kids don’t like being “different”, but nowadays people dye their hair red to try to look that way. I wish you had photos of your Halloween costumes!

Nanook, my vote is for “telephone directory”, though I have many fond memories of the Sears Wish Books.

KS, yeah, I remember the condensation building up inside (when I lived back East we would have to trick or treat in the snow sometimes!). You’re so right, it was a different time; I don’t know if it was really any safer, or if we were all just unaware of dangers. It seemed so wonderful though.

Lou and Sue, I think most people aren’t crazy about photos of themselves! The things I didn’t like were Smarties and banana-flavored candies, neither of which I can eat to this day. I’m sure there are others too. At least your hair is still red; I was supposed to meet up with a Disney-related person years ago, and he said, “Oh, you’ll know who I am, I have red hair”. And then it turned out his hair was completely gray - he still thought of himself as “the guy with red hair” though! I used to have almost white-blond hair, but it got darker as I got older, until it could be described as “dirty blond” at best. The string mystery will probably remain a mystery!

Nanook, of course there was always the rumor of some “rich people” giving out full-sized Snickers bars (or whatever) - I never found those houses.

Chuck, it seems like I would have a home-made costume one year, and then a store-bought costume another year. One of my store-bought examples was Snoopy, and he had a lightbulb on his nose that I could trigger with a switch in my hand - it was amazing how much that delighted some people! My mom once made a gorilla mask for my older brother, using a paper bag and some sort of artificial fur. I wish we had photos of it! It didn’t look much like a gorilla, but he loved it anyway. It worked perfectly well as a “scary monster”. Ah, the life of a penny collector - I am sure I dug through thousands of pennies hoping to find a 1955 double-strike or a 1909 “S” VDB penny. My grandma finally did give me a VERY worn 1909 “S” penny, and even though it is barely legible, you can see the tiny VDB (Victor D. Brenner) initials.

Dean Finder said...

It's statistically safer for kids now than decades ago, but parents are more paranoid. You hear about terrible things that happen anywhere and react as though that all happen in your neighborhood.

And no, razor blades in homemade treats never happened, except for very disturbed people putting them in their own kids' Halloween loot to fake an incident.

"Lou and Sue" said...

Major, you're so right! For years I was paying good money to remove the red, while friends were doing the same to add the red. :)

Nanook, speaking of catalogs, on ebay I recently purchased a 1968 Montgomery Wards Christmas catalog (for the fun of it) and enjoyed going through it. My mom regularly ordered from Wards (as their mail order store was close to our house) and I was surprised that so many items we had in our house, at that time, were from that 1968 catalog . . . Christmas ornaments (I still have); a long, colorful scarf (I still have); fake gold-colored electric fireplace that hung on the basement paneled wall (I no longer have), and more. Drooling over the toys and bikes and dolls, a couple months before Christmas, was so much fun, back then, wasn't it!

Sue

TokyoMagic! said...

Sue, I have a 1968 Sears "Wish Book" and also one from 1972. I plan to post scans of some of the "toy pages" from the 1972 version, this December.

My hair used to be pretty much the same shade as yours. It's still red today, but it has darkened as I have gotten older. I always wondered why our hair color is called "red" when it actually isn't. Did you ever wonder about that, or is it just me?

Also, my living room is currently furnished in mid-century modern furniture and knickknacks. And I have a lamp and shade almost identical to the ones in your photo, but the glaze on the lamp is black.

I remember every year, there was always one household in the neighborhood, that gave out either an apple, home baked cookies wrapped in a napkin, or a homemade popcorn ball. Those items were always given out by older individuals, but my mom would NEVER allow us to eat anything that wasn't professionally wrapped and sealed. I also remember getting the occasional penny or two. And yes, there was one house in the neighborhood, where they gave out full-sized candy bars, every year!

"Lou and Sue" said...

TM! I can't wait to see what you post from those catalogs! Memories! (What year were you born, if you don't mind me asking?)

TM! Regarding my hair color - mine went from carrot-top, to strawberry blond, to dull brown with red highlights, to a darker brown/auburn. Now it's a mixture of light-brownish with a dot of strawberry-blond (plus I occasionally add some blond highlights to the mix). It keeps changing. You're right - "red" does not truly describe our color.

TM! Too bad you didn't live close to me when I was clearing out my dad's house a couple years ago. My folks had a beautiful 1968 Grundig "hi-fi stereo/cabinet" that I practically gave away because I didn't have room for it and I was in a hurry to clear out the house. It was gorgeous!! I bet it would've fit in nicely with your furniture style. (And, your lamp in black sounds like something I would love!)

Sue

"Lou and Sue" said...

TM! I should've described that 1968 Grundig better (as they came in different styles and types of wood) . . . it was a large sleek console-cabinet, all in high-gloss dark walnut - with record player and AM/FM radio hidden inside. It was in perfect shape.

Sue