Goosey Night

A forum for discussing US dialects (accents).
ampersandranch
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Goosey Night

Postby ampersandranch » Mon Jan 09, 2006 6:52 pm

I couldn't help but notice that "goosey night" was left out of the list of night-before-Halloween choices. I went with Cabbage Night, since that's what my sister called it (and WHERE did she get that?) but kids in my area would look at her with blank stares. I was raised in north suburban NJ, but my sister lived in Brooklyn until she was 6. Could there be that much of a difference?

AngelEyesInHell
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Goosey Night

Postby AngelEyesInHell » Thu Jan 26, 2006 12:07 pm

I grew up in northren Jersey. We always called it goosey night.. I never heard of it any other way.. I moved to Oklahoma when I was 10 and they dont have that night at all... I would talk about it and no one would know what I was talking about.. Which was a bummer because it was always fun... Even though we stood a chance of getting expelled if we brought eggs to school..

sking
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Goosey Night / sliding pond / Petticoat Day

Postby sking » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:30 pm

Goosey Night is Passaic County; Cabbage Night is Bergen County as far as I know. It is interesting that there are similarities between Brooklyn and some parts of Northern Jersey. On the playground did you slide down a slide or a sliding POND?

Does anybody remember the first of May being petticoat day? This probably ended when girls stopped wearing dresses to school.

ampersandranch
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Re: Goosey Night / sliding pond / Petticoat Day

Postby ampersandranch » Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:01 pm

Goosey Night is Passaic County; Cabbage Night is Bergen County as far as I know..
We were Bergen county; all the kids in my school called it Goosey Night. My sister and I were the odd ones out. My dad grew up in Passaic county, I'll have to remember ask him what he went by. Not that he ever would have participated in such shenanigans. ;)

Boy, the kids on Rea Ave in Midland Park would do such a number with toilet paper! It was actually kind of beautiful.

sking
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goosey night

Postby sking » Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:04 am

My mother and I, who grew up in Passaic and Clifton respectively, knew only Goosey night. After having taught a few classes of ESL adults this bit of our culture, I found an article in NJ Monthly which said Goosey Night was very Passaic County and attributed Cabbage Night to Bergen County. I did a poll for a term paper I was writing, using informants from south of Passaic County. As I recall they knew it as mischief night and were unaware of the terms Goosey Night or Cabbage Night.

justplainbill
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Goosey Night

Postby justplainbill » Mon May 01, 2006 1:26 pm

I grew up in Little Falls and West Paterson (Passaic County), and we always called it Goosey Night. I never heard it called anything else while I lived there. Don't know where the "Goosey" came from, but from about age 12 on we looked forward to it almost as much as Halloween; smashing pumpkins, chucking eggs, soaping cars, running from the cops (we called them "squirrel-chasers"), etc., etc... those were the days... HAHAHAHAHA!!

Perry
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Postby Perry » Tue May 02, 2006 8:23 am

It was Devil's Night in Detroit. I never did participate. Would that be a good or bad thing to put in my CV? :?
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
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Stargzer
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Postby Stargzer » Tue May 02, 2006 12:52 pm

That depends on what sort of job you're applying for. If you're looking for a career in the field of arson . . .
Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee

Marvin Gardens
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Goosey Night

Postby Marvin Gardens » Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:28 pm

Goosey night is definitely a Passaic County thing.

I lived in Pequannock until I was 10. Most of the families in my neoghborhood were recent immigramnts from Passaic County (Paterson, Clifton, etc). We called it goosey night. Then we moved about 2 miles to Pompton Plains which had a more established populace. It was "gate" night. In Junior High it was the simple test to determine which end of the township you came from.

MattyGit
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Tick Tack Night

Postby MattyGit » Mon Jul 19, 2010 10:36 am

With varying levels of frequency you can also find reference to the night before Halloween as: Gate Night, Mat(or Mad) Night, Tick-Tack Night, Trick Night, or Miggy Night.

While teaching voice and speech in Northern NJ in the early 90's; I can across a few students from the Trenton, NJ area that independently confirmed Tick-Tack Night as being used in that area. As well as a number of students from the Rockland County area that used the term Gate Night.

I know that Tick-Tack Night has its roots in Yorkshire England. I wonder if there was at one time a larger Yorkshire immigrant population in and around the Trenton, NJ area.

I remember that when I taught in NJ, I did an informal study on Goosey Night. It was a very Passaic County term that migrated to the Bergen County area circa 1950/60 as many migrated from the largely urban Passaic County to the more Suburban Bergen County. If I recall correctly it was possible for the term to be traced even earlier to an earlier generation that moved from a certain area of NYC to Passaic County. From there, I am sure that it would have been centered around a certain ethnic group who migrated from a specific area. My study only went back a generation or two.


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