Remembering Halloween as a Child

It’s Halloween today, and I am recalling the many years I spent trick-or-treating as a child. We lived on a cul-de-sac, and thankfully, most of the neighbors were elderly. That made trick-or-treating fun for us, because we didn’t have to compete with hoards of children for the best treats.

We had one neighbor who always gave us apples, which was a real disappointment. He was fairly pious man and I guess he believed that instilling good health habits in children was a prudent thing. For my twin sister Teresa and I, it was a snore.

We wanted Hershey bars, Mars bars, and anything else that was chocolate in origin. Back then, we didn’t have to worry about razor blades, poison or abductions, because it was the late ‘ 50s, and the media didn’t instill paranoia into every sentence.

In the late ‘60s, I remember my mother getting dressed up like a witch, and she had this huge cauldron in which she stuffed her hydrocollator-a moist heat pack. She would put it in the cauldron of hot water, and place it by the front window. There, it would emit steam to resemble some forlorn soup made by goblins.

From the upstairs window, my twin sister and I placed the speakers from our stereo, and began playing eerie Halloween screams. It worked. Because our house was the shoddiest one on the street, the music combined with the cauldron truly made our home seem haunted.

We will be getting dressed up tonight as always, and heading to downtown Culver City to enjoy the festivities of the evening. From there, we will probably head to Westchester where many streets are decorated.

On one block, there used to be a very elderly man who played the part of a mortician. He was motionless for hours. No matter how many times you tried to torment him, he wouldn’t speak or move. But he’s not there anymore. I think he now lives underground.

I doubt we will trick-or-treat because we are both on a diet, and there’s no sense in having candy in the house if you can’t eat it. But it’s fun to watch all the children in their costumes, enjoying the holiday.

What Halloween capers do you remember, and how did you dress?