Jackie and I threw a Halloween bash complete with a pumpkin carving contest.  We were two months into our new jobs at First City National Bank in Houston following grad school. It’s hard to top the years we spent in Austin, but those first months in the training program at First City were a close second.  It was a twenty something’s paradise. Camaraderie, intellectual stimulation, nightly happy hours and a paycheck.  What more could you ask for?

We rented a house close to Memorial Park.  It was our first year as grown ups in the working world. But we still had one foot in our youth, unwilling to take ourselves too seriously.  We didn’t need much excuse to throw a party and gladly shared our spacious digs with friends and acquaintances.  On Halloween, we had a party and invited all of our friends, old and new.  There were UT friends living in Houston, friends who came in from Austin and Dallas, and of course, all of our new First City friends.  It was a wild party. Risher won the best costume, coming as Beethoven’s fifth. He wore tails, with a fifth of bourbon attached to his head.

The next day, our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Howdeshell, rang the doorbell. My first thought was that she was there to complain about the party. Then I saw the pie in her hands.   For us? How sweet. We chatted a while. The usual neighborhood gossip, and I thanked her for the pie. She told me she was glad to do it. After all, we were the reason she had so much pumpkin. She had found the discarded  jack ‘o lanterns from our carving contest. They were in our trash can by the side of the house.  I tried to keep a straight face. It was, after all, pretty resourceful. You know how that generation is.  Having lived through the depression and all.