Memories of Halloween linger still
The neighborhood I grew up in was sprinkled with stately, 19th century homes. Behind those Victorian walls once lived inhabitants of a bygone era.
When I was young, the Bartley sisters, as we affectionately called them, were all that remained of the turn of the 20th-century upper-middle-class families of Butler's East Pearl Street.
Their father and Civil War veteran grandfather had been farmers until striking oil along Thorn Creek in Penn Township outside of town.
After their black gold turned into green dollars, the Bartleys moved to Butler in 1914 and bought the 1872 home of deceased United States Congressman George Washington Fleeger.
The family would live on East Pearl Street for the next 77 years.
Each fall, when the towering maples around the Bartley house turned a kaleidoscope of colors, preparations began for Halloween and my visit to the sisters' large, white- painted, green-trimmed welcoming home.
My mother would take my sister, three brothers and me downtown to Aland's Toy Store where we hoped to find the perfect costume. On our way home, if we were good, Mother would treat us to a piece of milk chocolate bark at Cummings Candy Store. This heightened our anticipation for the bagful we would gather in just a few nights.
At the toll of the 6 p.m. church bells, which signaled the beginning of trick-or-treat, Mother gave us last-minute safety instructions. And before we sprinted down the dark, leaf-strewn street, she would cry out, “Be sure to stop at the Bartley sisters' house. They will be expecting you.”
White-haired and spectacled Clara Bartley had been a beloved literature teacher at our then high school on North Street, and her sister, Edna, had stayed at home, taught piano lessons and kept house for Clara and her parents.
Just the two maiden sisters occupied the house during my youth in the 1960s and '70s. Their parents had died a decade before, and a third sister had been taken from them during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.
Upon screeching to a halt and seeing the glow of the Bartleys' porch light, our costumed gang would make our way up the slate sidewalk and climb the steps of the white-painted, shingled and columned massive front porch that led us to the beveled glass front door.After knocking, we knew the cost for the soon-to-be-gotten treats would be a 15-minute visit in a room covered by white-painted books shelves and referred to by the two elderly residents as “the library.”Clara answered the door while Edna finished the last few bars of an unknown, ancient melody on the baby grand piano in the “parlor.”Graciously, my brothers and whoever else had joined our masked group of beggars would be led into the book-filled room where, upon entrance, Clara would instruct, “Have a seat on the davenport, children.”After being seated, Clara would begin at one end of the couch and have each of us unmask and tell her our name.“I'm Mark Leffler, Miss Bartley,” said the first of us she questioned.“Oh, yes,” Clara would say. “Your father is the chaplain at the Deshon (VA Hospital), I believe.”The next in line would then proceed in order just as her students must have done in her classroom so long ago.“I'm Paul Martin, Miss Bartley,” the reserved, brown-eyed neighbor of mine would respond with just tinge of an English accent.“Oh, Edna, this is the son of the English couple that moved here from Great Britain,” she said.“How Clara loved teaching Dickens at the high school,” Edna would quietly chime.Finally, Clara would come to my brothers and me. “You boys must be Dr. May's children from up the street?”But before we could shyly nod an affirmative, Clara would once again remind us that she had taught our mother and aunts in school and what pretty girls the Kemper sisters had been.Then, as if Clara knew the class bell was about to ring, she would nod to Edna that it was time for the treats.Gray-haired, meek and subservient, Edna would disappear into the darkened chasms of the house, emerging through a massive wood-trimmed archway carrying a sterling silver tray, holding the treats we had longed to have dropped into our bags. Edna would inform us with a look of delight in her lonely eyes that we each were to take two full-sized candy bars, and of course, the annual shiny red apple from their grandfather's Iowa orchards.After saying thank you and before we headed out into the cold October night, we would glance through the doors of the central hallway to the clock resting on the carved mahogany mantle in the parlor to see how much time had elapsed during our stay in the warm comfort of the Bartley home.As we raced down the steps of the wraparound porch to make up a few seconds, the next group of costumed children would be making their way up the same path that had landed us our best take of the night.That night, after the porch lights had been extinguished, signaling the end of another October, my siblings and I would sit down on the floor of our home and begin to ingest the spoils from our night of trick-or-treating. Somehow, the candy from the Bartley sisters always tasted a little sweeter than the rest.As I better understand decades later, the Bartleys had given us more than candy and a shiny piece of fruit. Each child who stepped into their Victorian home had received an act of kindness and neighborly interest that made each child feel important and that they belonged to the small-town world of Butler.I went to visit them with another neighborhood friend one last time after we had become too old for Halloween. It was 1977, and I was a senior in high school when we knocked on their door for what would be the last time.They remembered us and invited us into their home. We were led into the parlor by Edna while Clara sat down at the baby-grand piano and were asked if we would like to join them in a song.As we sang a tune from a different time, “Listen to the Mockingbird,” I sensed that these few moments were allowing us a visit into a bygone world that we would never experience again once these two special neighbors were gone.Clara passed away the very next year while I was away at college and Edna died in 1991. They are buried with their parents and sister at in the cemetery at the top of North Main Street, just about a mile walk from their home.Shortly after Edna's passing, my wife and I purchased the Bartley home that held so many fond memories from my childhood and where we would raise our two sons.Each Halloween for the past 30 years, our family has tried to welcome the new generations of trick-or-treaters with a little bit of the same kindness the Bartleys had shown mine and that still lives on in my heart.Bill May is a local historian, speaker and tour guide.
