HOULTON, Maine — Casey Harris was not born in Maine, but spent six years of her childhood here when her father was stationed at Loring Air Force base in Limestone.
Although she currently lives in Hartford, Connecticut, and hasn’t traveled back to Limestone since she left, she still visits the area nearly every year to see family.
Her fondest memories involve Halloween, she said Monday, as some of her happiest such holidays including the time spent in The County.
“I still tell my children that I wish they could have the type of Halloweens that I did as a child in The County,” she said wistfully. “There is just something about the way that we were able to run around the streets freely and be able to go from house to house without worrying about the people living there or the candy they were handing out like you do now.”
Harris said that while she lived in Presque Isle as a child, her mother always drove her to trick-or-treat with her cousins in Houlton. They had a certain route they stuck to each year — including the popular, and crowded, area around Commonwealth Avenue and High Street.
“I still marvel at how those people afforded all that candy for the trick-or-treaters,” she said. “Every year we would pass several houses on smaller streets that would run out of candy and turn their lights out. But no one on those streets did.”
Harris said that she was more of a “fad” dresser, dressing up in costume that was most popular that year. Her brother was “always a superhero,” while her cousins were usually “some sort of princess.”
Karen Mitchell, who currently lives in Bangor but grew up in Houlton, recalls going to several Halloween parties that the Houlton Recreation Center had in the early 1980s.
“It was a really fun time,” she said. “They had a haunted house one time that was all set up that my friends and I went through, with some of the staff and the community members ready to jump out and scare you. There were also some games and prizes and bobbing for apples.”
She said that she and her friends enjoyed picking out their costumes to attend.
Marie Carmichael, director of the parks and recreation department, recalled having the parties for several years in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. She said that they were initially held down in Market Square in Fishman’s Mall but moved up to the recreation center when the mall got to be too small a space.
Mitchell said that one of the highlights of the recreation center party that she recalls was a portion of the haunted house where you could reach into bowls and feel “human organs” that were actually just peeled grapes that represented eyeballs, cold, wet spaghetti that simulated intestines and raw chicken to simulate other mangled organs.
“It was pretty gross,” she said on Monday.
