Hell hath no fury
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross, pictured is a “MG,” similar to a the car wounded in the battle
Alfred State College opened its Wellsville campus in the late 1960s. Robert Kennedy, who was the state’s senator at the time, visited the campus. Alfred was known locally as Ag Tech.
Not being very bright, I thought people were saying Egg Tech, referring to the many agricultural programs the school offered. I don’t know when I finally realized that it was Ag Tech and stood for agriculture and not eggs. I tell you, at various times throughout my life I have been incredibly stupid. One of those times was Halloween 1967.
With the new school opening came a whole herd of new young men to the community. The girls in my senior class in the Fall of 1967 took notice. After all, there were around 140 in our class with at least half of them being guys we had known since kindergarten or 7th grade. Back then there were three elementary schools that fed into the high school. The guys had lost a lot of their mystery by senior year, but then I suppose, so had we.
The new boys in town peaked our interest. One of my closest friends lived in a big house on North Hill. For the first few years of the school many of the students boarded in Wellsville rather than driving back and forth daily over Jericho Hill.
My friend’s parents rented rooms to four boys – Tom, Dick, Harry and Claude. Needless to say, I don’t recall the names of the three other boys because I was intrigued with Claude. He drove a British Racing Green MG. I don’t know if I was more attracted by the sports car or him? I got to know Claude. In the MG, we cruised with the top down, the backroads of the county under sunny autumn skies.
Our idyllic romance came to an end when Claude became infatuated with a younger woman. That happened around Halloween.
Prior to that year I spent Halloweens dressed up in my father’s World War II Navy uniform or with a white sheet draped over my head running around the neighborhood with my cohorts Back then we were still able to accept candy apples, cookies and brownies and other treats from our neighbors. There wasn’t a lot of store-bought candy.
But I was 17 years old in 1967, and treats were for kids.
There were no organized shaving cream fights back then. By word of mouth, we all knew that we were headed for Main Street that Halloween night. And we knew the college boys were going to be there too, so I and my cohorts prepared. There is nothing like the revenge of a scorned woman. Claude didn’t have a clue.
We saved the guts that we’d scooped out of Jack-O-Lanterns and found some soy sauce to mix with them, making a smelly mess.
A crowd of rampaging teenagers crashed onto Main Street that Halloween night. Windows were soaped and creamed, toilet paper hung on lampposts and parking meters. Kids were throwing eggs and water balloons from the rooftops. From curb to curb kids ran rampant.
We found the MG parked on South Main Street and coated its wind screen, bonnet and boot and rag top with our soy sauce laced pumpkin guts and eggs. Then Claude and his friends saw us. We ran for our lives down Main Street. dodging eggs and water balloons along the way. We crashed through alleys I’d never stepped foot in before and we outran the college boys, losing them in the crowd of teenagers.
That was the Great Halloween War of 1967. The next day we left for school early that morning, to take a detour to Main Street to see what we had wrought. To our amazement the toilet paper was gone. The windows had been washed. There was no trace of eggs or tomatoes on the street. We were very disappointed.
After that we stopped seeing the college boys and got into football and basketball games and senior year.
The next year I was in college in Corning with my pal and cohort. That Halloween we walked from the house where we boarded on the east side of the city, to Painted Post. The only candy we collected was what we purchased in a convenience store.
Though much has changed in my life since that year, I will never forget the Great Halloween War of 1967 and a green MG under an autumn sky.
Kathryn Ross is a lifelong Wellsville journalist, columnist, and community activist. You can reach her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com
