🎃 Gate Night in Baynes Lake (a.k.a. the night before Halloween when we all turned into little hooligans)

The night before Halloween... when things got delightfully out of hand.

So, Kathleen Thompson left a comment on one of my Facebook posts:
👉 “You should write about Baynes Lake.”

Well, thanks a lot, Kathleen—because just like that, you flipped a switch. Sixteen years of my life came rushing back like a bucket of cold lake water. Suddenly, I was knee-deep in memories and small-town mischief.

Let’s start with the legendary night before Halloween—known only to the truly unruly as Gate Night.

👻 Not Halloween… Gate Night

Back in Baynes Lake, Gate Night wasn’t about costumes or candy. It was about chaos.
The fun kind. The harmless kind. The kind that made your parents shake their heads while secretly laughing when you weren’t looking.

We weren’t dressed as goblins—we just acted like them.

🧼 The Art of Soaping

Let’s talk soap.
Not that squeezy body wash stuff—real bars of soap. Ivory. Coast. Whatever was in the laundry room.

We’d use it to decorate windshields and—if we were feelin’ especially bold—kitchen windows. Our masterpiece? Probably something like “BOO!” written backward because someone didn’t plan ahead.

🧻 Toilet Paper Streamers

Toilet paper wasn’t just for bathrooms on Gate Night.
We turned it into streamers—flung through trees, over fences, across mailboxes. The whole neighborhood got a makeover that no one asked for.

🥚 The Egg Toss Chronicles

Now, I’m not saying I participated in any egg-throwing…

But I will say, I once found myself lying in a ditch with my crew, launching eggs at passing cars. (Strictly for reaction time testing, of course.)

And before you ask—yes, the ditch was for safety. Obviously. We weren’t reckless—just creatively misguided.

🚽 Outhouses Were Off-Limits… Mostly

I won’t confirm or deny any outhouse-tipping attempts.
Let’s just say Mr. White’s was off-limits. Even we had standards. That thing was full. And not the “cup runneth over” kind.

😇 Blame the White Kids. And Dennis.

I can’t name everyone who ran wild with me (statute of limitations and all), but if you were in Baynes Lake, you knew the White kids. If someone was stirring up trouble, there was probably a White involved.

Also: my brother Dennis. Because clearly, I was a perfect little angel and wouldn’t have done anything wrong without his influence. 🙄

📞 The Memory Hotline: Featuring Dennis

I don’t trust my memory anymore, so I called Dennis.
And boy, he remembered everything—or he made it up really convincingly.

“You remember that Halloween when Mom and Dad had that meeting at the house?”
“All the neighborhood cars were parked out front, and some of the older kids decided to soap every window in sight—and someone (not naming names) even dragged Dad’s railroad ties across the driveway so nobody could leave.”

Nope, Dennis and I weren’t involved (innocent, I swear!). But we had front-row seats.
Mrs. Sharp came outside yelling like a drill sergeant, naming every kid on the block—including her own. That moment is forever etched in Baynes Lake history.

🧟‍♂️ The Dummy Incident

We also built a dummy.
Old clothes. A stuffed head. Perched it on a stick. Then hid in the ditch and waited.
When a car came by—BAM! The “guy” stood up like something out of a horror film.

Some poor driver probably aged ten years in ten seconds.
(If that was you—sorry about the emotional damage.)

👮‍♂️ If Our Kids Pulled This Today…

Let’s be honest—if our kids did half the stuff we did back then,
they’d be in the back of a police cruiser before the toilet paper even hit the tree.

Or… maybe they already have, and we’re just blissfully unaware.
Because let’s face it—parents are always the last to know.

💡 Got a Memory You Think I’ve Forgotten?

So thank you, Kathleen, for lighting the match. That one little comment opened the floodgates, and now I’m swimming in stories I hadn’t thought about in years. Sometimes, all it takes is a nudge—a name, a place, a moment—and suddenly the words start flowing like a river in spring.

Got a memory you think I’ve forgotten?
👀 Drop me a name. A location. A moment.
Who knows—your suggestion might just be the spark that sets the next story on fire.

🌀 Wanda-ism of the Day:

We didn’t need costumes to be little monsters—just soap, toilet paper, and bad ideas.

🪑 Pull up a chair. I’ve got a story.