Oh, boo who! Today is Halloween, a night for ghosts, goblins, candy and mischief, or at least it was when we were kids. The world was a different place back then, drugs weren't on every street corner, gangs didn't take up residence in the suburbs, and there were no national threat color coded warnings. I get that, but I went trick or treating the other day with my son. Yeah I know today is Halloween and you would think that tonight would be deemed beggars night, and you might even think that it would start at dusk. That was not the case in our community.
We trick or treated in broad daylight starting at 5:30 and it ended at 7:30. It was not on Halloween so only about 1/4 of the houses were even prepared for the horde of dressed up kids. I think it is silly not to trick or treat in the dark on Halloween.
The one nice thing that our community did was have cadets from the police academy on foot patrol. It looked like a scene from the hit 80's comedy Police Academy: Citizens on Patrol. All that they were missing was Tackleberry and Tubs. This was a nice gesture by the city, but I can think back to the days of my youth. When Halloween was really something.
Bobbi Jo and I would meet up at dark at our Nunny's house. Dress up in the sweetest costumes, not some store bought reproductions; I have nothing against the store bought costumes my son was a store bought Obi Wan and it was cute. After we would get our pictures taken we would embark on an epic journey that would span the entire neighborhood. We grew up in a small little town but we probably walked 3 miles in the course of an evening. Everybody had their porch lights on, dressed up to give out candy, or left a bowl of candy out on their porch for the kids. The weirdest thing from this by gone era was that we knew everybody in our community, by name.
This was a different world. Places could call Halloween parties just that, instead of coming up with dumb code names such as harvest parties to cover up the pagan roots of the holiday. We were not afraid of our neighbors, because we knew them, and we didn't live in a housing development, we lived in a community. It is for the kids, so have fun be mischievous leave the toilet paper at home and give out handfuls of candy.
Barry
1 comment:
It is so refreshing to read this! I totally agree. I'm only 20 and I can still see the changes made from when I started trick or treating, to when I stopped and until now. What is up with people? Things have gotten so bad that we need police force for little kids to trick or treat? Its so not right. I was like you, we used to walk all over the place for hours and make our own costumes and we knew EVERYONE at the houses we went to. There were some trickers but it was never anything too horrible. It's just not the same anymore. It makes me so sad, I feel like kids are being robbed of the awesome experience that was trick or treating. So sad!
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