The Village of Nassau always had a police department. When I was in elementary school, the police department was actually just one part-time constable, Will Harrington. Will drove a black 2 door Hudson, probably about a 1946 or 1947. It was Constable Harrington’s personal automobile. The car had a huge chrome siren with a red light in front perched on the driver’s side front fender, and a long whip antenna on the rear fender, as well as a spotlight installed through the driver’s door. I don’t believe it had a police radio since there were no other police cars, and the Village had no police station. Will’s police car looked more powerful and intimidating than the grey Ford sedans then driven by the New York State Troopers.
Halloween was a major holiday in Nassau. Local youths loved to go to Fauth’s cider mill on Lake Avenue to swipe apples from the open bins. “Trick or Treat” in those days meant something. Little kids didn’t go door to door with their mother. Halloween was the night that the older boys went house to house, raising a little hell, soaping car windows when the owners didn’t keep a watchful eye. The mean boys used candles instead of soap. Candle wax was much harder to clean off. Years before, Halloween was a night to tip over out-houses, but those had all pretty much gone from the Village by the time I was a child.
A big part of Constable Harrington’s job was to keep the level of mischief down. He would drive slowly through the Village on Halloween night, shining the chrome spotlight along the houses to check for mischief-makers. He would yell at the groups of boys to move along, an action that was frequently met with a barrage of the pilfered Fauth apples before the boys scattered into the shadows, only to reappear a few minutes later after he passed by.
Early one Halloween night, I think the last one when Will was Village Constable, he stopped by Frank Pitts’s General Store. Frank’s store was next to the Post Office at the corner of Church Street and Elm Street, where the antique store is now. Will went in to get a pack of cigarettes and shoot the breeze for a few minutes with Frank. He parked the Hudson in the pull-off by the closed Post Office but left the car’s engine running. When he came out a few minutes later, his Hudson was gone.
It was the grandest Halloween ever! Will was both enraged and embarrassed, as he walked around the Village looking for his car, and threatening every one of the older teenage boys and young men that he spotted. Word of the theft got out quickly, and it was an open season that night for apple stealing, apple throwing, and soaping and waxing windows. Some of the boys took advantage of the situation and even busted up Halloween pumpkins put out as decorations on some porches.
Halloween night eventually faded into November first, but there was no sign of Will’s Hudson the next morning. Poor Will had to hitch a ride to his regular day job that morning, and by the time he came home that evening everybody in the Village knew of Will’s plight and was ready to offer a theory as to who had done it, and where his car was. They say that Constable Harrington walked all around the Village that night, looking for his Hudson in barns, behind hedgerows, and wherever he thought it could be hidden, but there wasn’t a trace of it.
The next night, a little after seven, Frank Pitts called Will to tell him that the Hudson was parked in front of the Post Office, with the engine running.
