Trick-Or-Treat

                       Got a bag of candy collected Halloween,

                        Biggest bag of candy that I had ever seen.

                        Had to get it x-rayed before I had a treat,

                        To be sure a psycho hadn’t put a razor in my sweets.     

                                                            - “Halloween” by Heywood Banks

Halloween is big business. Frighteningly, Halloween is now the second biggest consumer spending holiday in the United States. That in itself isn’t particularly scary. I would think Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or even Thanksgiving might rank second. When all of the Halloween supplies and events like costumes, candy, party supplies, haunted houses, pumpkins, decorations, movie rentals, etc., Halloween will rake in well north of $8 BILLION this year. Now, THAT’S SCARY!

Let me wax nostalgic and revisit my childhood. When I was a kid, my family’s entire Halloween decorating budget was whatever a small pumpkin cost. I was probably in third grade when my dad first whacked a pumpkin into a rather generic jack-o-lantern. It sat in the middle of one of a dozen or so living room windows. Our living room was a converted front porch, so it had a bunch of windows. This jack-o-lantern had a single candle providing its illumination.

Dad must have thought that pumpkin was a PITA, since it was replaced with a small blow-mold jack-o-lantern. I still remember it distinctly, and if it were still around would fetch a pretty penny on eBay. It was a tall stylized jack-o-lantern, and it was lit by a single Christmas tree lamp. Okay, it was a clear C7 that would now be called an old-school night light. Still, it glowed orange and was really cool, okay?

Trick-or-treat was always celebrated on Halloween night, regardless of whether it was a “school night” or not. Even on a Sunday in the “blue law” era, trick-or-treat went on!

My costume consisted of whatever Woolworth’s or G.C. Murphy had in my size for as little as money as was possible. Once I wore an old sheet in traditional two-hole ghost glory. Usually it was the cheapo flammable costume with a plastic mask that you really couldn’t see through very well.  The fact that I wore glasses from age eight onward exacerbated this low-vision mask issue.

Since it was often chilly at the end of October, I usually had a coat over my costume, leaving only the mask exposed. Wow – what a costume. We didn’t really scare the neighbors into giving up some loot. It was more of a donation to assuage their guilty conscience because they felt so bad for us freezing to death as we went house to house. We always managed to fill up a department store shopping bag with goodies in only a couple of hours.

Now, my dad always gave out nickel candy bars. Yes, back in the day, a full size candy bar cost just five cents. According to a federal consumer price index calculator, that same nickel candy bar should cost well less than a buck today, but I dare you to find one for that price! My dad was partial to Clark bars. When I was a kid, only the cheapest of cheapskates gave out what we now laughingly refer to as “fun size” candy bars. Not much fun in those for an eight-year-old in the 1960s, is there? 

Some older people in the 1960s gave out home made popcorn balls and apples. We never worried that some nut job was out to maim or even kill us with those. Razor blades and pins weren’t a concern until the national news put a real Halloween scare into our parents, pointing out the single case in some random big American city. Suddenly, the benign work of little old ladies became suspect, and their lovingly made teats ended up in the trash can. That was our paradise lost.

Schools had Halloween parties, with kids wearing their costumes and eating cupcakes and candy provided by classmate’s moms. My wife’s father did not allow her to celebrate Halloween (or even Christmas for that matter), so she was the only kid in her elementary school class without a costume. The homeroom teacher wasn’t about to let one child be left out, so she brought an extra costume in case a child “forgot” hers. Today, the ACLU would sue the school into oblivion, so if my dear wife were growing up today, she would just be S.O.L. However, my wife was grateful for her teacher’s concern and remains so to this day. She loves all of the holidays that she didn’t celebrate as a kid, and relishes them. As a result, I get to reminisce at every holiday and relive those great memories. 

I hope you get some nickel candy bars in your shopping bags this Halloween!

                                    On Halloween I’ll go to town,

                                    And wear my trousers upside down.

                                    And wear my shoes turned inside out

                                    And wear a wig of sauerkraut.

                                                             -“On Halloween” by Shel Silverstein