I would like to introduce you to my first Guest Blogger. Her Facebook presents her as “Barbara Ringe Czelatdko Brown Deer H.S. 70 Life Enrichment Coordinator Zany Grandma, Mom and Wife.” and she is known as Bubbie. I met Bubbie on Facebook in the Brown Deer School Friends group, and I was constantly blown away by her amazing writing. I love this story, and as it’s October, it’s particularly appropriate. Bubbie has given permission to share it here for you. Enjoy!

BROWN DEER HALLOWEEN 1961-

THE RUN FOR MY LIFE

by Bubbie Czelatdko

One of the biggest events on my social calendar has always been Halloween.

Even as an adult, I continue to go “full tilt” decorating my home, including a front yard cemetery with vampire coffin and tombstones with the neighbor kids names engraved across them.

I always LOVED Halloween, and being a kid growing up in Brown Deer was more fun on Halloween than any other night of the year!

Weeks before the arrival of Trick or Treat, plans were put into action as to what costume I would be wearing, and the things that I still needed to gather to complete my look.

My mama had collected all of the Collegeville costumes we had purchased at the local Woolworth, and placed them on the shelves my dad had built under our basement stairs. The orange and black boxes... each with its own cellophane window...allowed you to view the hard plastic mask of the character within. The rayon one-piece costume slipped over fall coats and sweaters ... if the night proved chilly... and still allowed you to run freely enough to keep up with the other kids. These costumes were pretty cool, and between the three of us kids we had amassed a witch, a devil, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Bozo the Clown, an astronaut and a few others to pick from.

When we outgrew the store-bought phase... we got extra creative and crafted a costume from things we found around the house.

An old white sheet became the perfect ghost... if holes were cut for eyes and a mouth. Clumsy and obscuring your view... the dangerous outfit caused you to trip over everything near the ground... and before the night was over you vowed never to wear it again.

One year, I put on my mom’s old robe, stuck pink-foam curlers in my hair, a green-mud beauty mask on my face and went as my mother. My father laughed hard when I told him who I was supposed to be. My mother, however... was not as pleased with my creative choice.

If worst came to worst ... and we were stuck for ideas... you could always go as a bum. Plaid shirt, baggy pants, charcoal whiskers and a red bandanna tied to a stick, and you were back in business as a hobo riding the rails.

This year, I had decided to be a Beatnik... dressed all in black, with goatee, bongo drum and a French beret. I carried a candy cigarette for effect... but soon ate it ...in a moment of weak temptation.

A fancy, store-bought “Trick or Treat” bag or plastic pumpkin with a handle was great for collecting candy... but a pillowcase worked just as well.

Brown Deer had set up a 7 to 9 PM time limit for passing out candy.

When we were little ...our parents went with us begging door to door. By the time my sister, Carol turned 10...my father felt that she and a few other neighbor kids were old enough to go on their own, and only if we stuck together in a group. Despite my sister’s objections... I made sure I was part of that group.

We were instructed not to leave the area bordered by Bradley Road on the North, Sherman Blvd on the East, 51st Street on the West and Calumet on the South... some 200 houses were calling my name!

Butterfingers, Baby Ruths, KitKat Bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Smarties, Jaw Breakers, Bazooka Bubble Gum and many other delights were ours for the taking! Look out world... my doorbell-ringing finger was twitching away!

(Dramatic Pause). Now... Saint Michael Cemetery sat at the top of the hill just off of Calumet and Sherman. A chain link fence surrounded the little plot of land where all of Granville’s Irish immigrants were buried as far back as 1843.

The Mahoney, Malones, Sullivans and Shaughnessys... lay side by side in eternal rest.

Once these families had crowded on the deck of a ship leaving their Irish homeland... waving hankies wet with tears... as they said goodbye to loved ones they might never see again... as they anticipated starting a new life in America so very far away. But now those brave travelers existed only as names on slabs of granite and sandstone.

James and Mary Daley Ahearn and their three infant sons, Thomas (1852), Patrick (1856) and Denis(1858) have a plot marking their family tree... and the tragedy of losing one child after the other... not one of the “wee ones” reaching his first birthday.

And Irishman, John Brown from the County Kerry, has a tall obelisk monument topped with a cross...his last name chiseled at the base along with the year 1860. Whenever I see his name... the tune about his body “a molding in the grave” comes to mind. Yet, I am sure it is not the same man remembered in the song.

Sweet Mary Carmody, erected a stone for her 31 year-old husband, Dennis who died in 1854. He is buried next to his sons, Tommie and Willie...who both perished in the same year... perhaps from a now curable disease. The Carmody tombstone... so worn from time and Wisconsin weather has broken into three separate pieces... now nestles flat in the grass that grows around it.

I knew none of these facts about the people who once settled my hometown when I was a child Trick or Treating back in 1961. All I knew that night was it was my turn to “MAKE THE RUN FOR MY LIFE” and I was shaking in my boots with fear!

It had become a tradition to stop at the cemetery on Halloween to prove your worthiness and bravery by running straight to the back fence, touching it and running out again. This must all be accomplished without any of the dead pulling you down beneath the earth... NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN.

With the gang gathered around me...I stood silently under the wrought iron span that topped the cemetery entrance and spelled out “SAINT MICHAEL “ in large capital letters. The funerary artist had created a curling leaf and vine pattern on each side of the words. The metal had started to rust here and there after years of guarding the dead in the rain and snow.

I looked straight ahead into the graveyard. The tall monuments looked like specters... lined up at random in the dark... waiting ... waiting... for ME! Even the slant markers closer to the ground looked like the perfect spot for a skeletal hand to reach up from beneath the soil and pull me down. The solitary oak tree... its branches spindly and long... cast a shadow that gave movement in the moonlight.

The people who lived behind the graveyard had mercifully left their garage light on and I could see the tan brick of their house from where I stood. Why did it look so far away? It seemed so much closer in the light of day!

“You can do it. You can do it,” I kept repeating over and over in my mind. I was a fast runner, but this would require more than just speed... I needed agility... I needed COURAGE!

The boys had made “THE RUN” the year before... so they were laying it on pretty thick as I was about to make my try.

“Run fast and don’t stop!” was all Joey said. He slowly drew his index finger across his neck in warning.

“Good luck! You’re gonna need it!” added Henry with a knowing curve of his lip.

It seemed like my heart was pounding so loudly that everyone around me... even the dearly departed... could hear the tell-tale sound. I took off like a flash... dodging here and jumping there. My head snapped forward as I almost fell over a “pillow” grave marker in my path! The jolt caused my Beatnik beret to fly from my head and land somewhere on the ground. I knew I had to keep going...if I stopped to look for it... I would surely be a GONER. My hand touched the chain link fence and it gave off that vibrating metal sound. I spun and ran back for the opening... out of breath when I got there.

While everyone was patting me on the back for my brave accomplishment, I said, “I dropped my hat, but I’m afraid to go look for it!”

“It belongs to the dead now.” was Henry’s deadpan reply.

I started to cry, but looked away so no one would see.

We all walked away from the dark cemetery...the boys heading down Calumet for one more pass of candy collecting... the girls done for the night ...headed home. I looked over my shoulder as we left ...wondering which Irish ghost would claim my hat as their own.

The next morning when I got up...my beret was sitting on the stoop outside my front door. I don’t know how it got there. I never will. I don’t know if one of the boys feeling sorry for me went back to retrieve it... or the dead took pity on me and returned it while I slept.

I promised myself then and there that I would go back to that cemetery on the hill some day and learn more about the people who had spared my 10 year-old life on that spooky Halloween night back in 1961.