HIGHSCHOOL

 In October of 1964, my girl friends and I decided to have a Halloween party.  There was Karen, Margaret (Class Valedictorian), Rosanne and myself.  They were tall, brainy, belonged to the National Honor Society and I was simply there for comic relief.

Karen's house was the logical place, it had a nice big basement with a pool table, bedroom and bathroom.  I was impressed with the house for a couple of things, there were intercoms in each room and one of the shower doors had butterflies embedded in the door and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. 

We spent a couple of weeks begging for bales of hay and cornstalks with which to decorate.  And of course it was costume.  The invites were simply announced at school and about forty kids showed up.

 There was music (record player), food, soft drinks and the pool table was very  popular.  I decided to be the fortune teller.  I set up a card table in the bedroom.  Some one had scared up an actual crystal ball and we used a flashlight for dramatic up lighting in the darkened room. I was, of course, dressed up as a Gypsy fortune teller, mostly scarf on head, long skirt and as many bangles that I could find.  

I would usher in each person and I used an immersive story telling technique.  I told them, "You are in a forest, please describe it. " Then I would ask, "You see a path in the forest, please describe it."  Next question was, "You see some sort of obstacle, please describe the obstacle.  Can you get past the obstacle?"  The final question was, "You see a bear, please describe the bear". 

The first time I read this and mentally answered the questions it went something like this.  My forest was very old, very tall pine trees.  The path was a smooth white sandy path and went straight through the trees.  The obstacle was a fence of logs across the path, I could easily climb it.  I saw a bear cub.  

The general interpretation is that the forest represents your environment, the path is how you navigate your life, the obstical represents how you solve your problems.  The bear represents death, whether true death or the death of your ambitions or projects.  

We had a Scavenger Hunt.  One of the items on the list was a church key.  Most everyone brought back a can opener, but one young lady went home and got the actual key to her church.  While we waited for the stragglers to come back, we heard that one of the kids had rolled their car.  

So about twenty kids went fogging to the emergency room of the local hospital.  We were a bit noisy, so they told us to go home.  The pretty much ended the Halloween Party.  It took us a couple of day to clean up the basement, take the hay bales back and I think the cornstalks went to some local place to feed some animals.