Halloween, 2012

I was standing in the Halloween candy aisle today deciding what kind of candy to buy on the slight chance any trick or treaters come by tonight. The two little boys down the street are probably the only possibilities. Anyhow, I commented to the gentleman standing beside me also surveying the offerings that I had to be sure to buy something that I like because I sure didn’t want to get stuck with candy that I don’t like but that I wouldn’t be able to resist eating. He laughed, and then several of us shoppers (oldies, all of us) started talking about how we used to celebrate Halloween.

First of all, it was all about kids. I never saw an adult in a costume until I was grown and wore one myself to a Halloween party. And we kids had an incredible amount of freedom to roam—pretty much unsupervised. I remember coming home having covered numerous blocks where almost every house had a porch light on, signifying that treats were to be had there. A lot of running and whooping it up was involved, as I recall. And then when we got home, there was the ritual dumping out of our paper bag, or plastic pumpkin onto the floor and sorting the candy, trading my undesirables with my sister for some I liked better. My mother tried hard to hold the line on how much we ate at one time, but I think she often looked the other way.

Somebody—the elementary school or the city or somebody else—held a Halloween fair at a tiny park near the school. There would be wishing wells and a haunted house (the Boy Scout cabin converted into scaryland) and go-fish booths and balloons and screaming children and harried parents. It was great. Then we’d go around the close-by neighborhood trick-or-treating, and then do the same at the houses on the way home. No one ever got poisoned or cut by a razor in an apple. And we did get apples.

I did get mighty scared once. We walked up to a house where the porch light was on, and just as we started up the dark steps, a man in a scary costume (I think he was in costume, he could have been naked for all I know) stood up suddenly from the front step and waved his arms at us. I came to about two blocks away, finally aware that I was screaming and running for my life. He probably had a good laugh. And I did, too, years later.

So, given that Halloween isn’t what it used to be, I think I’ll just sit in my living room in the dark tonight and wait for the Great Pumpkin.