Halloween Parade - 1946

The two in the mouse costume are Dennis Moyer on the left and Daryl Dwier on the right, the teacher behind them is Miss Longstreet.

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One of the biggest events of attending Groveville Elementary School was our Halloween Party, I believe this was the lower grades, only. On Halloween every child came in costume, store bought or homemade, most were homemade, this was Groveville, if you had enough money to buy a costume you had enough money to have chicken twice that week.

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The party usually consisted of Cookies, Cupcakes, Koolaid brought in by our parents. Then there was the parade, the entire school walked down Church Street, on the side walk, pretty much single file,and you stayed on the side walk, or else.

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We walked to Main Street, turned right, walked past the Firehouse, all the way to the Mill (Anchor Thread and Mercer Textile). All of the people of the Mills would come out and watch you walk past and cheer and clap, I think it was almost as big a deal to them as it was to the kids, because they all came out.

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We would turn around and walk back up Main Street, we would cross over to the other side when we reached Matlack's and Weiss's house, because that is where the side walk starts on the other side of Main Street.

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We would walk all the way to Lloyd & Mary Bowers, cross over Main Street there because the sidewalk ended there, to Phoebe Robinson's side of Main and came back to Church Street and back to the School.

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All the way parents, mostly Mom's, would be out on the street and out on their porches cheering, clapping and taking pictures, some ran out to straighten their child's costume, it was such a fun time.

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The amazing part of this was that it was not just the parents of the children in the parade, watcing, but everyone came out for the poarade. There were no flyer's or postings that the parade was today, everyone knew, it was discussed at the Post Office and at the General Store, most of the people of Groveville "Just Knew" today was the parade.

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Now days you see teachers with small groups of young children walking holding a rope between them so they don't get lost. We had no rope, we had teachers we listened too, after all we would be walking past out mothers, it was nothing for the teacher to say "Little Gary is not listening, and the reply from Mom would be, I'll take care of that when he gets home.

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We had costumes with full face masks that obscured our vision, costume shoes that didn't fit because they were from our older brother, Dresses that were long and dragged the ground from our mothers and costume pants too long and rolled up to look silly and easy to trip over and we never lost a Kid. So glad we now have laws and rules to protect us from having all this fun.

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This is just one more thing that the children of Groveville will have to cherish forever, I know I will.