Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram:

Cameron Banker Opened His Home to a Generation of Trick-or-Treaters

by Jeanne Williams - Temple Daily Telegram

October 31, 2011

“The zombies were having fun The party had just begun” - “The Monster Mash,” 1962 song

by Bobby “Boris” Pickett

CAMERON — Shortly after the sun sank on the Halloween color-schemed skyline behind

tree silhouettes, Cameron children would prepare for the night’s traditional

festivities of candy collecting clad as ghosts, goblins, ghouls, vampires, skeletons,

scarecrows, black cats and fairy princesses.

Part of the twilight revelry in Cameron during the 1950s and early ’60s was a emorable

stop at the Oxsheer Smith home for a Halloween open house. One of the town’s most

respected businessmen, Smith made sure there was no need for trick-or-treaters to utter

the classic recitation, “trick or treat,” since he ensured each visitor received

generous treats at his palatial red-brick manor.

In varying accounts, Smith’s largesse yielded such Halloween booty as individual bags

of candy, large chocolate bars, small toys, or silver dollars and quarters.

Smith’s tradition of an elaborate Halloween fantasy for the town’s children came with a

costumed greeter on the lawn and relatives doling out generous goodies for the hundreds

of masked moppets who passed through on their trick-or-treating trek.

Such sweet spoils made the Smith home the most popular destination in town for

masqueraders on Halloween evening.

“Everyone wanted to go to this big house at Halloween,” said Patricia Hays of Cameron,

who made her appointed trick-or-treat rounds dressed as a witch, while her brother, in

a sheet, was a ghost. “You could get your bag half-full of candy in one stop.”

From a child’s overactive imagination, the lavish Halloween-themed red-brick Smith

mansion on Oct. 31 could have been appropriately scored with Johann Sebastian Bach’s

ominous organ oeuvre Toccata and Fugue in D minor, music often associated with haunted

houses in movies.

The entryway was festooned with glowing, fiendish-faced jack-o-lanterns, and inside

were more glowing carved pumpkins, decorations and costumed characters acting as guides

and candy distributors.

“It was a scary mansion to go to,” said Hays who, as an adult, is still awestruck by

the intricate details employed for the annual event. “They must have used dry ice to

simulate smoke under this huge black cauldron” where witches in full Macbeth regalia

presided, distributing generous portions of treasured treats, she said.

Hays’ mother, Patsy Perry of Cameron, has a rare keepsake from the Halloween event of

1957, a high-resolution black-and-white photo of Smith posed with her daughters Cindy,

Carolyn and Kathy Matula.

“He was seated inside the home and gave them some candy in their little baskets,” Perry

said. “He was a very kind and gracious host.”

Smith played out his role as lord of the Halloween manor, dressed in a natty business

suit, said grandniece Marion Cooley of Cameron, who carries on the family tradition,

albeit scaled down, of a Halloween treat fest replete with impressive outdoor props.

Cooley remembers visiting the house at age 5, learning sometime thereafter that her

grand-mother was one of the candy givers disguised under a pointed black hat.

Costumed greeters directed children through the living room onto the sun porch where

witches would hand out candy, including full-sized Butterfingers and Baby Ruths.

Hundreds of children carried home candy from the Smith home, Cooley said.

“It was a big deal,” said Jane Monroe of Cameron. “He was really good to the kids in

Cameron.”

Neighbor Eugene Mitchan remembers congested streets around the Smith home on Halloween,

with the comings and goings of trick-or-treating masqueraders visiting the most

munificent candy cache in town.

Smith, who died in 1974 at age 93, is one of the community’s elite role models posted

on the C.H. Yoe High School Wall of Honor. At age 35, Smith was one of the state’s

youngest bank presidents, a post he held for 54 years, according to a history written

by Marion Travis. Part of his recorded history mentions the Halloween parties he “held

in his own home for Cameron’s children who found witches, goblins and candy waiting for

them.”

Halloween no longer holds the mystique for children as it did in the 1950s and ’60s -

the heyday of thrilling, nighttime neighborhood trick-or-treating jaunts, said Rob

Weiner, pop culture guru and subject librarian for Texas Tech University Libraries.

“In some places, trick-or-treating has lost its popularity,” Weiner said.

But a generation of Cameron residents will never forget a kinder, gentler world more

than a half-century ago when a prosperous businessman shared sweet riches with the

town’s children who braved dark streets in costumes for the simple, fun tradition of

trick-or-treating.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com

All articles from the Temple Daily Telegram are published with the permission of the
Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram

Cindy Matula (left), Oxsheer Smith (seated), Kathy Matula (next to Smith) and Carolyn Matula visit during the October 31, 1957 Halloween Open House at Smith's residence.