Mom’s Soap Box

Devil’s Nights, the day before Halloween; It’s a parent’s worst night of the year. It’s when kids go out in the neighborhood and raise hell. I remember dressing all in black and getting cartons of eggs, toilet paper,shaving creme and soap and packing it up in a bag and stashing it behind my house with my brothers. Our weapons of choice used to terrorize the neighborhood. It was a big deal for kids when I was growing up. We only soaped houses that did not give out treats. We always made sure we remembered who gave and who did not.

So if you did not give out treats the Halloween before, you would be a victim of soaping the next Halloween. That’s how we saw it as a kid. In our minds it was the right thing to do. And it was warrented in our little brains; what freaks me out as an adult, our parents let us do it.

We would soap our neighbor’s windows and car windows. We would drape cars with toilet paper and ring doors and run away; the worst was getting dog poop and putting it in a brown paper bag and lighting it on fire on someone’s front porch and then ring the door bell and runaway. That’s sick and I would sit behind a tree and watch.

I was the only girl with ten boys running through the neighborhood like wild demonic animals. One of my brother’s friends lit our neighbor’s bushes on fires. Once a man came out of his house with a shot gun and ran after us.

Devil’s night has been a tradition since WWII, going back as far as 1930. This all started in Detroit when youths engaged in criminal behavior, which were vandalism (such as throwing eggs at the homes of neighbors, or stringing toilet paper in trees) on the night before Halloween. Just what I did as a kid. Oh my God I was a vandal. We never broke anything except for the burning of the bush…..
In the 1970’s this when the arson began on devil’s night. Neighborhoods were warned to never leave anything outside and neighbors were told to kept their front porch lights on.

Now- a -days you still hear about kids who throw eggs, and we see in my home-town that kids throw pumpkins and corn husks at homes, and some rip mail boxes down..

No matter how you look at it, it’s vandalism and a crime. My parents knew what we were doing and turned a blind eye, I’m sure they did not like it but they let us goe out every Devil’s night.

This type of behavior, even if it’s egg throwing- is a crime.

As a parent I would be very upset if my kids did some of the things I did as a kid.

Playing tick tack devil’s night is one thing and cow tipping another, but eggs, and fire is not fun it’s plain dumb.