Country Connections by James and Ellen Perry
It was late October, the best I remember 1957 or 1958. Our neighbor’s wife, who was also my father’s sister, invited our family to join her family and others for our first Halloween party.
The party was held on the Friday night before Halloween. My brothers, Larry, Bobby and Dennis and I got off the school bus on Friday evening, changed into our “old” clothes and did our everyday chores which were milking the cows, putting the mule in her barn stall, feeding and watering her, gathering the eggs, feeding the chickens and slopping the hogs, splitting kindling and wood for the cook stove and the Warm Morning coal-wood heating stove and carrying wood to the house for the night and the next day.
We then washed our faces as our mother looked on and put back on our school pants worn that day. Then we ate a light supper not knowing if food would be served at a Halloween party as this was the first for our family.
I noticed the sky was looking like rain and it was getting colder, so I got our kerosene lantern, filled it up and picked up half a dozen kitchen matches. Then we started walking the quarter mile on an old roadbed to our aunt and uncle’s farm which adjoined ours on the top of the mountain.
We arrived at their home at dark and the Halloween party had just begun. We walked in and there was probably a dozen or more neighbor’s kids and our aunt’s two girls who were like our sisters. We joined in the party. Our aunt had devised games such as pin the tail on the donkey, word games and the hardest thing I have ever tried to do, bobbing for apples. All us kids got our faces, hair and shirts wet. If you’ve never bobbed for apples, try it. I don't remember anyone actually bobbing an apple.
The party was so much fun I didn’t think to check for rain. About 9:30 it was time for my mother, brothers (all younger than me) to leave and start toward home as our mother had planned to do fall cleaning the next day. My mother believed in cardinal cleaning times which were summer, fall, winter and spring. On cleaning days my brothers and I would spend the entire day after breakfast playing in the woods. Our mother did not tolerate rough housing boys during cleaning day. Our dad was preparing for hog killing which would be the first cold day of November.
Well, we put our coats on, said our goodbyes, thanked our aunt, went out the back door and guess what we found? A four- to five-inch snow had fallen on Halloween weekend in October.
It is still the earliest snow I remember. I reached for the lantern, lit it and looked toward the hill behind our uncle’s smokehouse. With it being very dark and that much snow cover, finding reference points was very difficult.
At the time I was either 12 or 13 years old and knew every tree along the old roadbed. My mother was worried we would get lost and not find our way home. The old kerosene lantern was not much but kept our family together. I had my younger brothers and our mother hold hands so no one would get lost from me. I would go from one apple tree to the next along the old roadbed ‘til we got home an hour or so later.
When we got home the first thing that we did was get the fire in the Warm Morning stove stoked up. All our feet and lower legs were wet and cold. Soon the house was warm. We were all safe and my brothers and I were upstairs in our room for the night. That Halloween snow kept my brothers and me in the house the next day. My mother postponed the fall cleaning day until the next Saturday.
There’s one thing about weather in the mountains of East Tennessee: you get what you see when you go outside. That Halloween surprise is still the earliest snow that has happened in my lifetime.
My father has told about a late snow in the early 1930s that killed the crops. He said it came in early June.
It’s amazing how weather forecasting is today with NOAA’s satellites looking down 24-7 and can forecast weather days or a week ahead. The problem today is people do not remember the Japanese hit song which went to a #1 international hit in 1962 by Kyn Sakamoto called Suki Yaki. Suki Yaki means “I look up when I walk.” Looking up at the sky is good for checking the weather, appreciating the beauty of the sky which surrounds our home the earth and it brings peace to oneself.