This darkling night
Tonight goes by many names in many places, but where I grew up it was known as Mischief Night.
I don't know if it survives there at all in these days of paralyzing fear of letting your child out of a locked home without armed guard supervision, or in times where people use this night as an excuse for arson of buildings and rioting. When I was growing up, however, it was a night that annoyed adults but carried a special dark magic of its own for kids and teenagers, somewhat akin to Christmas.
What do I mean by that? Well, it was amazing to see what had been done on Halloween morning when you woke up, almost like looking at the pile of presents under the tree. You would look out the window and see trees everywhere tented in toilet paper, drawings in soap on windows and cars, Vaseline on doorknobs and all sorts of other adult-irritating things. You would get to school and everyone would be talking about what they had seen that morning, with a touch of awe in their voices. Everyone looked forward to Halloween for the costumes and the candy and the opportunity to be out in the dark at night, but Mischief Night was the forbidden fruit of adolescent rebellion out in the open to see.
Someone always comes along to ruin things, though, and in our neighborhood that someone bore the name Ronny Scicora. The Scicoras were a family of the lowest caliber, to be brutally honest, and were roundly despised by everyone in the neighborhood (especially by the state senator who lived next door to them and suffered most by their activities). Their house had peeling paint, the yard was untended aside from being mowed once every few weeks, badly. The junk in their yard was of nearly Appalachian proportions. In general where they lived was an eyesore, but they themselves were far worse. Their home erupted domestic conflict out into the streets on a nearly nightly basis, with the bloated harpy of a mother chasing one ill-bred child or another out the front door, shrieking and slapping while the father bellowed at her a few feet behind. They were a sullen, ugly tribe about which I still can't think of a single nice thing to say.
Which brings me back to Ronny Scicora. Ronny was the most loathsome of a loathsome clan, and sociopathic to boot.
Ronny was prematurely huge and muscular and dumb as a rock. The only joys he found in life were torture of those younger and smaller than him, and in disrupting any chance of learning in the classroom he sat in for the other students. He was also ugly as a baboon butt. Adults could be heard to say he had prison written all over his face from an early age.
Still, Ronny's acts of clearcut criminality were few up to this point - he was just a garden variety thug, until Mischief Night 1977. That night Ronny stepped out into the spotlight in his full glory.
It started around 1:00 in the morning. House by house people became aware of strong flickering light dancing on the ceilings and walls of the bedrooms, and rushed to the windows to see what was going on. They were confronted with walls of flames along the fronts of their properties where the leaf piles had been left for the town to come and pick up. Ronny had loaded himself up with accelerant and was dashing through the neighborhood soaking leaf pile after leaf pile with either kerosene or gasoline and tossing matches into it. The fires spread down the streets rapidly, as the weather had been dry and the leaves were well suited to burn and smolder with a bit of help from the flammable liquids.
Soon every fire truck from town and a few surrounding towns were in our neighborhood extinguishing smoldering leaf piles, joined in their efforts by homeowners with garden hoses in their bathrobes. At first no one knew who had done it, and the police were everywhere, but eventually a neighbor of the Scicoras came forward and said she saw Ronny run into the house a short while earlier. The tools of his trade were found on the back steps, and he was hauled off to jail.
That was the start for him. Within three years he was arrested for burglary and began his first substantial prison term, and his lifetime as an in-and-out prison bird began.
After that night Mischief Night was far less tolerated than before, and I was only able to escape the house once for it, but could only find one person to join me. The life was beaten out of it because one person took it too far.
Sadly, this is just another example of the world getting both "safer" and "more frightened" at the same time. Maybe it is for the best, though. People do seem to feel compelled to set Detroit and Camden on fire this night every year.
I miss the early 70s sometimes.
I don't know if it survives there at all in these days of paralyzing fear of letting your child out of a locked home without armed guard supervision, or in times where people use this night as an excuse for arson of buildings and rioting. When I was growing up, however, it was a night that annoyed adults but carried a special dark magic of its own for kids and teenagers, somewhat akin to Christmas.
What do I mean by that? Well, it was amazing to see what had been done on Halloween morning when you woke up, almost like looking at the pile of presents under the tree. You would look out the window and see trees everywhere tented in toilet paper, drawings in soap on windows and cars, Vaseline on doorknobs and all sorts of other adult-irritating things. You would get to school and everyone would be talking about what they had seen that morning, with a touch of awe in their voices. Everyone looked forward to Halloween for the costumes and the candy and the opportunity to be out in the dark at night, but Mischief Night was the forbidden fruit of adolescent rebellion out in the open to see.
Someone always comes along to ruin things, though, and in our neighborhood that someone bore the name Ronny Scicora. The Scicoras were a family of the lowest caliber, to be brutally honest, and were roundly despised by everyone in the neighborhood (especially by the state senator who lived next door to them and suffered most by their activities). Their house had peeling paint, the yard was untended aside from being mowed once every few weeks, badly. The junk in their yard was of nearly Appalachian proportions. In general where they lived was an eyesore, but they themselves were far worse. Their home erupted domestic conflict out into the streets on a nearly nightly basis, with the bloated harpy of a mother chasing one ill-bred child or another out the front door, shrieking and slapping while the father bellowed at her a few feet behind. They were a sullen, ugly tribe about which I still can't think of a single nice thing to say.
Which brings me back to Ronny Scicora. Ronny was the most loathsome of a loathsome clan, and sociopathic to boot.
Ronny was prematurely huge and muscular and dumb as a rock. The only joys he found in life were torture of those younger and smaller than him, and in disrupting any chance of learning in the classroom he sat in for the other students. He was also ugly as a baboon butt. Adults could be heard to say he had prison written all over his face from an early age.
Still, Ronny's acts of clearcut criminality were few up to this point - he was just a garden variety thug, until Mischief Night 1977. That night Ronny stepped out into the spotlight in his full glory.
It started around 1:00 in the morning. House by house people became aware of strong flickering light dancing on the ceilings and walls of the bedrooms, and rushed to the windows to see what was going on. They were confronted with walls of flames along the fronts of their properties where the leaf piles had been left for the town to come and pick up. Ronny had loaded himself up with accelerant and was dashing through the neighborhood soaking leaf pile after leaf pile with either kerosene or gasoline and tossing matches into it. The fires spread down the streets rapidly, as the weather had been dry and the leaves were well suited to burn and smolder with a bit of help from the flammable liquids.
Soon every fire truck from town and a few surrounding towns were in our neighborhood extinguishing smoldering leaf piles, joined in their efforts by homeowners with garden hoses in their bathrobes. At first no one knew who had done it, and the police were everywhere, but eventually a neighbor of the Scicoras came forward and said she saw Ronny run into the house a short while earlier. The tools of his trade were found on the back steps, and he was hauled off to jail.
That was the start for him. Within three years he was arrested for burglary and began his first substantial prison term, and his lifetime as an in-and-out prison bird began.
After that night Mischief Night was far less tolerated than before, and I was only able to escape the house once for it, but could only find one person to join me. The life was beaten out of it because one person took it too far.
Sadly, this is just another example of the world getting both "safer" and "more frightened" at the same time. Maybe it is for the best, though. People do seem to feel compelled to set Detroit and Camden on fire this night every year.
I miss the early 70s sometimes.