My Corner Online

 

Halloween Memories

 

Shared November 1, 2016 I wrote this one after have a fun conversation about Halloween trick-or-treating in the good 'ol days.

Here is some of the conversation.

7 wonderful fun tricker treaters who had fun with our 25 year old pumpkin bean bag toss and left plenty of candy for The Hubs to eat. Who wants to take bets on how long until he eats it all? How many did you have visit?

I had hoped the weather would help too. I miss the good 'ol days of our childhood. Everyone does the mall or trunk-or-treats now because it is safer.

My memories are of Jim and I all dressed up standing at the door waiting for it to be dark enough to go out. Mom was the judge of when it was dark enough. We stalked out the front window for signs of activity. No one wanted to be the first one out because that was some kind of etiquette thing (I suppose to allow for family dinners). When we spotted someone else out, we would convince her that it was dark enough and take off. I don't even remember a parent going with us. Jim watched over me. The parents stayed home to hand out candy unless the child was really little. I guess the world felt that much safer then. There were droves of kids. We had to wait in line at every house just to quickly say "trick-or-treat" and get one "plunk" of candy in our orange plastic pumpkin. You couldn't walk from one house to the next without meeting and passing others. It was so exciting to see so many costumes. Sometimes there was the game of running to beat someone else to the back of the line, although the adults would scold us for running, we all took to running when we could get away with it. Then when we got home we would dump the bucket on the carpet and carefully sort out and investigate our loot, sometimes trading.

It seems that things changed by the time you and my sister went out. There began the reports of razor blades and bad stuff in the candy and all candy had to be inspected by parents when you got home and you only went to neighbor's houses you knew. I remember the shock of it all and that is when it seemed the holiday began it's neighborhood downhill. I don't really remember, but I think your mom and my mom and the others all walked together with their children, with the mom's chatting at the street. I stayed home and handed out candy and Jim was off doing whatever teenage boys with cars would do. There were still plenty of children coming to the door even then. I always liked handing out the candy and telling the children how awesome their costumes were, or guessing what they were, and making them smile.

Quote from ABC News page below. Goodness, I remember the crazy x-ray and the contemplation of whether or not we needed to do it or not, but I never knew anyone who did. "Tampering with Halloween candy became a problem in the late 1970s and early 1980s when police departments reported incidents of children finding blades, pins and pieces of glass in their candy. Beginning in 1982, the National Confectioners Association maintained a Halloween Hotline in which law enforcement agencies could report incidents of tampering, and some hospitals X-rayed children's candy for foreign objects."

A friend wrote, "We were reminiscing last night about "the good old days" when the costumes were often the store-bought vinyl kind that made you sweat. The humidity in the masks made it hard to breathe. You kept risking cutting your tongue on what was intended to be a breathing hole. You had to wear a coat over the whole thing prompting multiple protests."

oh my! So funny! It is fun to reminisce. I was thinking about them last night too as I was trying to sleep. When I was talking about greeting others on the street to guess what they were dressed up as, we also had to guess who we were talking too, and we had to do the ceremonial lifting of the masks to see who we were talking too. Oh, those were the good 'ol vinyl days! ...and not just for records!