Halloween. It’s changed a lot. Or maybe it’s me.

I never even knew there was any controversy about it until I was late into my forties. Or maybe there was no controversy until I was late in my forties, I don’t know. But as a kid, it was just a fun time we all looked forward to for no particular reason other than that we were kids, and Halloween was part of the yearly ritual of childhood.

I could be wrong, but I think the Halloween season began with  the arrival of all the new Ben Cooper costume boxes  at Walgreen’s and T.G.&Y, and the charge they sparked out into the air, like a neon sign announcing that the big day was imminent. When they came in, I shuffled through the boxes every day, contemplating the plastic faces beneath the cellophane window, sometimes wondering what the heck they were supposed to be. It might say “Hobo” on the box, but I’m not sure the packagers and the designers were always on the same page. As the days passed by, I watched the best ones disappear because I honestly never liked any of them enough to ask my folks to buy it for me.

In fact, I’ve tried to remember a single costume I ever wore, and except for Zorro, the big thing on TV at the time, I can’t recall a single one.

The big event was the annual school Halloween carnival –now usually called a Fall Fun Fair if it’s held at all. Like I said, no controversy back then. The school gym was decked out like a fair, with little game booths where you picked a lucky duck out of the water or chucked water balloons at a favorite teacher. That’s right, favorite. Too young to hate, even though some teachers were sterner than others

Best of all of course was the actual trick-or-treating, though I don’t recall anyone ever pulling a trick. My dad used to tell me about how he and his friends would turn over outhouses, but I was a city kid and outhouses were just not that common by the late 50s-early 60s. Maybe the older kids TP’d a house or two, but I was in the younger set. We were all about treats.

Even at age 7 we got to go out by ourselves, a group of four or five, no need for parents to tag along in them days. At best, we were told not to talk to strangers and to be in by nine o’clock. We never started before dark, and we never strayed out of our immediate neighborhood, what could possibly happen?

If a porchlight was out, you knew not to bother those folks, but dark porches were rare. Most grownups seemed to be as excited as we were, though they didn’t have the luxury of life-size Jason animatronics or inflatable glowing pumpkins that a group of us could camp in on their lawns. I don’t even recall any little ghosts and witches painted on wood and stuck in the ground. Decorating for Halloween was something you did on the class bulletin board, not your yard.

Now treats were really different. There were still the store bought treats, though there weren’t as many different kinds of candy bars back then. But many of those, like those orange marshmallow peanuts that I still love, were handed out individually, unwrapped. And the best treats, like cookies and dripping caramel apples and golden, syrupy popcorn balls the size of your dad’s fist you just grabbed out of the offered bowl. Germs? Poison? Razor blades and straight-pins?  You’ve got to be kidding.

In fact, I remember one couple that was never home on Halloween, but they always left a big plate of chocolate chip cookies on the porch. Amazingly, we all knew that we were only to take two, and we all did just that. When we’d pass the house going back, there would still be a few cookies left, but we never took them. Today I wonder how many stray dogs slurped over that plate, aside from all the grimy little hands. Did teenagers think it was funny to spit on the cookies and leave them for the youngsters?

The next day, the candy bag would go into a closet, and would be searched less and less often, until it was forgotten about entirely. Most of the good stuff disappeared quickly, but much remained until the next year, when you would find Snickers bars hardened to rock and Likemade packets crusted on the inside. Toss it out. It was almost Halloween. There would be more.

–Larry

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