“Trick or Treat,” I yelled that Halloween night when I was a grade-schooler around aged 11 in Uptown N'Awlins, as I knocked on the door with my younger buddy, Squirt, to this creepy looking haunted house on Neron Place off of S. Claiborne Ave that took up a few blocks area – in a section we'd always seen and heard of as kind strange, and where an old miser had lived and had been mean to many other kids.
I grew up on Broadway nearby and Squirt lived down the street.
Back then, parents easily let us go out on our own for Halloween – we would cover some big Uptown neighborhoods by riding those then popular Banana Bikes with big baskets that we also used for our newspaper delivery boy jobs!
This spooky area was right off S. Carrollton Ave and Claiborne where the Street Cars converge. Her house was very dark looking and unkempt with many natural spider webs hanging all over the place!
Once before, being a young entrepreneur who cut grass for some folks with an old Jacobson Lawn Mower, I skeptically rang the doorbell for the scary looking house with my mower nearby – only to quickly run away as I heard and saw a sinister looking woman with a screeching voice yell, “Leave me alone, I like my grass high!”
Squirt, himself, had had his own strange experiences on Neron Place he'd told me about, so it took a lot of daring for me to get him to be brave enough to join me that Halloween night.
And I convinced Squirt to join me in dressing up in scary Munster costumes – I was Herman and Squirt was Eddie, so we could really try to spook that “Wicked Witch of the West 'Neron Place,'” that we so remembered from the Wizard of Oz movie!
So I decided to ease Squirt into this adventure by first trick or treating with him around Audubon Street and Blvds, as well as in the ole Tulane Graduate Student Apts on S. Claiborne by Calhoun Street. What was so cool about the Tulane Apts was that one could get tons of candy on each floor by simply walking from one residence to the next – we must've filled 2 Full and overflowing Schwegmann Paper Bags each!!!
Next, we hopped on our Banana Bikes loaded with candy in our baskets down Claiborne for that Neron Place Haunted House!
It was a Full Moon also that night, so it added to our suspense. That Neron Place area was so run down, and that mean lady had turned away many-a-light pole repair man in the past, so even with the light from the moon, dat street was very dark!
So we carefully parked our bikes near the Carrollton side of Neron so we could high-tail it out if needed.
That haunted house needed no decorations, as there was tons of moss from Oak Trees hanging everywhere!
I took out my flashlight so Squirt and I could carefully approach walking over all kinds of tree limbs and trash on the sidewalk and grass.
Squirt got a little queasy feeling and wanted to back out, but I convinced him to stay by giving him some of the Snickers that he'd wanted from me earlier that he had not gotten enough of.
As we stepped onto that squeaky porch, we heard what sounded like bats flying over us and actually saw few of dem!
I was beginning to get a little fearful, so we just quickly went and knocked on de door but stepped back a bit!
Lo and behold just as we saw the old woman opening the door and yelling, “Get outa here,” a family of raccoons came out running towards us! We both dropped our Schweggman bags and flew to our bikes as fast as we could narrowly escaping the coons!
I don't think we ever rode our banana bikes faster than that!!!
Mom and Dad wondered why I was home so early that night and so sweaty …
You certainly got the scare you are looking for. So she harbored raccoons for pets? Very interesting. And, "Schwegmann Paper Bags? Such detail. We have several famous paper mills in Wisconsin with their labels on their paper bags, but I don't recall ever even reading them. I wonder what makes these bags equivalent of a "designer" name.
In my changing neighborhood during my elementary years when I went trick-or-treating, the nicest house, a substantial two-story that was nicely painted and kept up was directly behind ours across the alley and owned by a dentist whose son was our best friend. Anyway, next door there was a ramshackle one-story house with a ramp in the front to the porch that was all grown up, not just in weeds, but brush because it had never been mowed or cleaned since the owner became wheelchair-bound. We never saw that owner and we never bothered to knock on the door of that house. It was just too scary. When the old man died, the old car we spotted from the garage off the alley through its grungy window turned out to be a 1915 model with gas lamps and side curtains that hadn't been driven in over 25 years. It was a regular Munster ride.
Tasked by his Goddess to find, relocate, and then quicken, the last three Heart Tree gem-seeds, Vanx the bard, and his motley crew of adventurers, set out to do just that.
“Trick or Treat,” I yelled that Halloween night when I was a grade-schooler around aged 11 in Uptown N'Awlins, as I knocked on the door with my younger buddy, Squirt, to this creepy looking haunted house on Neron Place off of S. Claiborne Ave that took up a few blocks area – in a section we'd always seen and heard of as kind strange, and where an old miser had lived and had been mean to many other kids.
