Comments | teenybuffalo: Aren't you scared? Well, that's just fine!

teenybuffalo

Aren't you scared? Well, that's just fine!

Oct 30, 2016 22:13

Today was once known in parts of New England as Mischief Night, or by similar names. My mother grew up in Dedham, MA, in the forties and fifties, and she has an odd story about the tradition she saw in her childhood for October 30th. She grew up in a neighborhood which is now a genteel suburb but was then a commercial intersection full of urban ( Read more... )

rl, folklore, folklore: us, life is cheap in eldritch new england, movies: the crow, halloween

Comments 6

moon_custafer October 31 2016, 10:51:32 UTC

Yesterday as is our October 30 tradition, we listened to the Mercury Theatre "War of the Worlds." The Panic is now supposed to have been greatly exaggerated (possibly due to newspapers jumping on an excuse to discredit radio); and it occurred to me that if the anecdote about some people shooting at a water tower because they thought it was a Martian tripod has any truth to it at all, there's a chance they were actually Mischief Night celebrants who got caught and made up the excuse in retrospect, or had the motive attributed to them by the press.

teenybuffalo October 31 2016, 13:08:18 UTC

I never thought of that before. It works perfectly as an excuse, though. I like it!

asakiyume October 31 2016, 17:05:56 UTC

Wow, by eerie coincidence, your entry makes me recall a dream in which my dwelling (not current one; a dream one) caught on fire. I dropped a hot iron onto exposed insulation, and although I quickly picked it up again, the insulation had started to smolder, and I couldn't put it out. I'm terrified of house fires (and wildfires). What a scary recurring event in your mom's childhood.

Thanks for the info on the Nain Rouge--v. cool.

So--am I reading this right? Robocop and [whoever is the burn victim mad scientist] and The Crow all take place in Detroit? I ... did not know that.

teenybuffalo October 31 2016, 19:42:44 UTC

Yikes! That's a very disturbing dream. It sounds like it's on a part with those dreams about teeth falling out. *shudder* As for Mom, she was completely blase about the building catching fire, because it happened so often. After a while, I think the whole family was like, *sigh* "Better go outside again and wait for the fire truck."

Well, I was kind of exaggerating. I recall that Robocop is set in Detroit, but the "burn victim mad scientist Jesus movie" I was thinking of is Darkman, and it's set in an unnamed city which I've always assumed to be Detroit because it's so built up and has a lot of abandoned buildings and factories. The three movies all go together in my mind, that's all.

asakiyume November 2 2016, 14:21:29 UTC

Just still boggling about being blasé about housefires!

"Not THIS again... *sigh*"

teenybuffalo November 2 2016, 15:28:59 UTC

Yeah. That's exactly how they felt about it, to hear Mom tell it. If you ever wanted an example of how people are conditioned to accept horrifying things because the things happen a lot, look at Mom's childhood.

(Of course, they also grew to accept this because they couldn't afford to live anywhere else. Mom likes to talk about how she grew up "dirt poor!" in that voice somewhere between sad and bragging. I do believe it's both a point of pride and a sad memory for her. And I should stop guessing at my mother's state of mind.)