The Great Cardboard Box Adventure
The street that my friends and I lived along in the late 70's was a very wide avenue lined with older two story houses. Along every block there were very large elm trees that would cast great shadows over the bumpy sidewalks running along either side.
Each September would bring the beginning of Fall, the cooler air and the turning of the leaves on the huge trees standing in the front yards of most every home along the avenue. September also brought the beginning of the great cardboard box adventure.
I think I love Halloween so much because it brings back so many memories of my best friend and I and the adventures we had while building our own haunted maze inside his old, multi-room garage.
Our quest would begin with our carefree hunt for the biggest and best cardboard boxes in town. We were both in junior high and couldn't drive so we relied on our trusty old bicycles. You know the ones, bright colored paint, banana seats, chopper style handle bars, goofy white grips and chrome fenders. Real junior high nerd bikes straight out of the seventies.
My bike was multi-colored with reds, oranges and blues while my best friends was mostly green. We would ride these modes of monster transportation all over town searching out appliance stores, furniture stores, dumpsters and the most coveted place of all, the funeral homes. You see, couch boxes were good, refrigerator boxes were great, but coffin boxes were the piece de resistance of our haunted maze.
There was one slight problem when finding these magnificent boxes. Getting them back to the garage on our bikes became a small adventure in itself. Read more...
Each September would bring the beginning of Fall, the cooler air and the turning of the leaves on the huge trees standing in the front yards of most every home along the avenue. September also brought the beginning of the great cardboard box adventure.
I think I love Halloween so much because it brings back so many memories of my best friend and I and the adventures we had while building our own haunted maze inside his old, multi-room garage.
Our quest would begin with our carefree hunt for the biggest and best cardboard boxes in town. We were both in junior high and couldn't drive so we relied on our trusty old bicycles. You know the ones, bright colored paint, banana seats, chopper style handle bars, goofy white grips and chrome fenders. Real junior high nerd bikes straight out of the seventies.
My bike was multi-colored with reds, oranges and blues while my best friends was mostly green. We would ride these modes of monster transportation all over town searching out appliance stores, furniture stores, dumpsters and the most coveted place of all, the funeral homes. You see, couch boxes were good, refrigerator boxes were great, but coffin boxes were the piece de resistance of our haunted maze.
There was one slight problem when finding these magnificent boxes. Getting them back to the garage on our bikes became a small adventure in itself. Read more...
Labels: 70's, Curtis Tucker, funny moment, Halloween, Memories
posted by Shaggy D at
10:35 AM
1 Comments:
As co-creator to these mazes, I can echo my best friend's comments on the great memories we created. We were blessed with one of the greatest garages ever! It was a two car garage situated behind and to the left of our house. It had four separate rooms; two rooms at the back of the garage (intended for storage), the main garage itself and a hallway that ran along the right side of the garage (originally intended to be a mud room). Altogether, there were four doorways into the garage which was great because we could work entrances and exits for our mazes without needing to have the main garage door up. All of the doors were old and creaky with old fashioned doorknobs that just added to the spookiness we were trying to create.
Box gathering has already been covered, but the making of the maze was great as well. We would spend HOURS after school and on weekends putting the maze together…we would eat in the maze, hang out in the maze, do homework in the maze. It became a home away from home for a month. My best friend was usually the lead architect of the maze. He was always drawing mazes during home room, and used these as his inspirations for the twists and turns in our Halloween mazes. I say this because these were elaborate mazes.
Entering our maze began through the hallway which led to an interior wood plank door that opened to the main room of the garage...this was the entry to the maze. There were usually 3 or 4 of us operating the maze. One person would dress in their scariest Halloween costume and be the entry keeper to the maze. Their job was to escort people down the hallway (darkened with spooky music playing) and then feed them to the maze one at a time.
We had enough space in all of the rooms of the garage for wrong turns, areas where you could stand, black light areas and areas of total blackness where all you could do was feel your way through. Some areas of the maze would have “secret entrances” so that we could sneak in behind someone in the maze, scare them and then get out quickly. The blacked out areas and dead ends were great because if we weren’t scaring people in these areas, people would scare each other by crawling up behind someone and not knowing they were there! Nothing like unexpectedly running into someone you can’t see! Total sensory deprivation helped achieve this as well. We had LOUD spooky music on constantly so no one could hear anyone else approaching in the maze. The only things that could be heard were the screams and laughter of those people having a great time in the maze. Of course, we would occasionally have a neighborhood bully try to ruin things by attempting to tear up parts of the maze. With experience, we developed ways of dealing with these folks…even bullies get scared!
Eventually, we got too busy to continue the maze tradition, but it is firmly planted in our memories! Thanks for writing about this CT!
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