You would think that the mid-20th Century was a time for overcoming some of the foolishness and unfounded fears that had crept over into that century from the previous one. By 1950, fewer people were throwing salt over their shoulders and refusing to let blonde children bring in the new year, for fear of bad luck. By 1960, not too many motorists would crash their car into a retaining wall in order to avoid crossing paths with a black cat in the middle of the road. And, by 1970, hardly anyone felt the blood rush from their face when someone at the dinner table accidentally “crossed steel” by absent-mindedly laying a stainless steel knife on top of a fork or spoon. But they still feared the Gypsies.
Every summer in the Pennsylvania Appalachians a “Gypsy Alert” would ring out from town to town. Better lock your doors because the Gypsies were coming to steal your children! The alert went from neighbor to neighbor and from one neighborhood to another. And it always occurred during carnival season, which meant most of the summer months, but especially during the Fourth of July weekend.
As children, we were instructed to walk in pairs or groups and not to speak to strange dark-haired women in old print dresses and paisley scarves who wore funny shoes. And to stay away from unshaven men with big-brimmed hats and suspenders altogether. No one stopped to consider that this tall order would eliminate contact with about half of our relatives at the time. It didn’t matter. The Gypsies were in town!
No one really knew who these Gypsies were or where they came from. They certainly didn’t come all the way from Hungary in their wagons to steal American children. As a child, I assumed that these people could not have children of their own and would take any healthy kid they could get their hands on. I felt sorry for them.
The word was out that these crusty and coarse people wanted somebody else’s children to clean out their wagons and shovel the horse manure and run errands for them because they were too lazy to do it themselves. No one in Appalachia suspected that these so-called Gypsies were just Americans called “Carnies” by the rest of the country, people who liked carnival work and carnival life and not paying taxes.
For us kiddies, the “dreaded curse of the Gypsies” was fearing them as much as fearing the devil, himself, without ever getting to see either.
Every summer in the Pennsylvania Appalachians a “Gypsy Alert” would ring out from town to town. Better lock your doors because the Gypsies were coming to steal your children! The alert went from neighbor to neighbor and from one neighborhood to another. And it always occurred during carnival season, which meant most of the summer months, but especially during the Fourth of July weekend.
As children, we were instructed to walk in pairs or groups and not to speak to strange dark-haired women in old print dresses and paisley scarves who wore funny shoes. And to stay away from unshaven men with big-brimmed hats and suspenders altogether. No one stopped to consider that this tall order would eliminate contact with about half of our relatives at the time. It didn’t matter. The Gypsies were in town!
No one really knew who these Gypsies were or where they came from. They certainly didn’t come all the way from Hungary in their wagons to steal American children. As a child, I assumed that these people could not have children of their own and would take any healthy kid they could get their hands on. I felt sorry for them.
The word was out that these crusty and coarse people wanted somebody else’s children to clean out their wagons and shovel the horse manure and run errands for them because they were too lazy to do it themselves. No one in Appalachia suspected that these so-called Gypsies were just Americans called “Carnies” by the rest of the country, people who liked carnival work and carnival life and not paying taxes.
For us kiddies, the “dreaded curse of the Gypsies” was fearing them as much as fearing the devil, himself, without ever getting to see either.
No comments:
Post a Comment
This blog was closed for public comments on July 31, 2012.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.