"ORANGE RAIN"

On Halloween evening in 1963, I was in third grade at the time and lived with my parents and sisters Janet, Leeanne and baby brother Scott in North Granby, Connecticut. We lived on Bradley Brook Road. My Mom had made crepe paper costumes for us. I was the Jolly Green Giant, my sisters were orange crepe paper pumpkins. My baby brother Scott was in a stroller. His costume was being a baby.

We all started out on the neighborhood trick or treat route and arrived at the first house. After this house we walked away from their front steps when all of a sudden the sky let loose with a tremendous rainy downpour. Our crepe costumes disintegrated. I was streaked in green crepe paper ink and my sisters were covered in "orange rain" from this deluge. They said "we can't see".

We all were soaking wet with our destroyed colored crepe costumes. My Mom had to improvise new costumes after spending hours constructing the crepe costumes which were inspired from an article in the "Ladies Home Journal". She started constructing these costumes in September as these costumes were complicated; only to be destroyed in five minutes.

I ended up being a table. My Mom had a previously constructed a table with a tablecloth and place setting for four sewn on to the top of the table cloth. My sisters became "princesses"; kind of like Cinderella except that they were "pumpkins" first whereas Cinderella's coach would turn into a pumpkin if she didn't get home on time.

So, through our soggy transformation; we succeeded in our quest for our bags of candy.