I lived in a very small town of 500 when I was growing up in Illinois. It was an ideal childhood and it was very much like the TV shows "The Andy Griffith Show" and “Happy Days” and others similar to that.
Our little town had a beautiful new grade school and a old majestic looking high school along with a gorgeous 2- story library and looking back on that, I can appreciate those buildings being built for such a small town as ours.
In addition to that, we had excellent & such dedicated teachers that did such a wonderful job teaching us what we needed to learn and it was such a good education and I am amazed when I look back on that and think of all of that came from such a small farming town.
But obviously, the parents wanted their children to have an excellent education and it can be seen by the schools and library and education that we received. They took very good care of the children in our town. I never really thought much about it until I started writing this blog and I started looking back on how things used to be for us and how things are today and how the parents of that community watched out for their children and their community in that small town.
I still remember that we would celebrate holidays at school such as Memorial Day when all members of the school band would go to the cemetery for a program to honor the men and women who served in the Armed Forces and the band would play and it would be a large part of the program.
But what comes to mind since it is October is how Halloween was celebrated in our town. The high school would arrange a Halloween Party for all of us which kept us all together at a fun party in the gym and eliminated the children from maybe being out on the streets and causing some minor misdeeds.
We bobbed for apples, participated in a lot of fun games with prizes, had a lot of laughs with our friends and had refreshments and all in all had a great time together for a whole evening.
I know things are different nowadays for a lot of children as they go out and like to go trick and treating but we enjoyed the simple planned events by the school and the parents knew where we were and we were safe plus we all had a lot of fun with our classmates. I wouldn’t trade all of those memories from so long ago for all the candy I could get going around trick or treating in a neighborhood nowadays.
Whatever you do this Halloween, have fun and be safe!
