Spooks and Neighbors

I don’t know when this happened. If I was more thoughtful I would have written dates down. But on Halloween of some year I noticed, beyond my front stoop, where costumed kids were standing between my Jack O’ lanterns under a porch light, parents lurking in the darkness behind them. They were looking at me and their kids, overseeing the exchange taking place between my bowl of individually wrapped little Snickers and small bags of Whopper malted milk balls and their treat bags. And these were not little kids. I would guess their ages at ten and up. I couldn’t help but wonder what the parents were trying to see. Sometimes I would wave, and they would wave back. Odd, I thought.

That was back in the day when you could take your kids’ candy to the hospital and have it X rayed to check for razor blades and needles and such. That had to be the silliest duty ever for the X ray technicians, to say nothing about overtime pay or the costs of using the technology to take an in depth picture of an assortment of candy bars. It was probably seen by someone in the hospital as good public relations. And that can only be so because parents appreciated it. I think that’s faded out, at least in our area. I’m pretty sure the kids were not worried about biting into a foreign object and being maimed for life. The trip to the hospital must have been an agonizing delay in the inevitable sugar rush. If they were like me as a kid, all they wanted was to eat the candy. They’d been eating it all night between houses. They wanted to take it home, spread it out on the floor, look at the loot all in one glorious display, and tear into it.

My Mom started dropping me off by myself at a young age in Danvers, a town of 800 laid out in a big rectangle, long streets running East to West, shorter streets North to South. The school was on one end, so I asked Mom to drop me off at the other. My friends and I would make our way weaving back and forth, hitting all the houses. I was the youngest so I got all the old ideas for home made costumes tried out by my brothers and sisters. I was a scarecrow one year, as all of us once were. They found the little wooden cross, two flat sticks of lath, with yellow cotton work gloves tacked on the arms. Hold it in front of you, put a shirt over it, tack a straw hat on top, and look through holes between the shirt pockets. Pretty low visibility costume. Good thing there wasn’t a lot of traffic in Danvers.

We knew the best houses. Mrs. Oehler, whose husband repaired shoes and spoke more German than English, made homemade taffy apples. She would drop them, covered in wax paper, with a thud in your pillow case, smashing the popcorn balls. She was a big smiling woman, happy to have kids come to her door. Virginia Martin gave dimes. She was the school secretary. She was always dressed up and painted a mole on her cheek as a beauty mark amidst lots of make up. Once when I was the last kid on her porch, the rest having run to the next house, she dropped an extra dime in my bag while winking at me, her husband smiling behind her. I always thought they liked me.

We ended up at the school where they had cider for us. We marched in circles for costume judging. I don’t remember what adults were there. The adults were minor players in my trick or treating days. The kids owned the streets. I never encountered trouble on Halloween. Later when I was too old for trick or treating I caused some trouble, but that’s another story. In Danvers, if you were big enough and had the stamina, you could hit every house. When we were older we got giant bags of candy, calling on everyone in town who had their lights on. They’d try to guess what our costume was, and then who we were as real people. In Danvers I was then, and continue to be among the old people, Dean and Catherine’s youngest boy.

As a parent I approached Halloween the same way with my kids. When they were old enough to navigate the streets safely we let them go out on their own, in our neighborhood, with their friends. We gave out candy at the house while our kids went out and got candy at the neighbors. You could buy candy for your own kids, give it to them, and it would all come out even, but the kids would miss the fun. They would miss the interaction of ringing the neighbors’ door bells, and the neighbors, we in turn, would miss the joy of having kids in costumes smiling on the porch. Halloween is an event that creates community.

When the party at the school was over I would go downtown and call Mom to pick me up at the restaurant. On the way home in the car she would ask me in detail about the evening.

“Did you go to Aunt Dorothy’s and Uncle Harry’s?”

“Yes.”

“What did they give you?”

“Slow Pokes.” Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Harry ran the grocery stores. They had candy to burn. I always thought they gave out the stuff that didn’t sell well. The Slow Pokes were rock hard.

“Did you go to Aunt Carrie’s house?.” Aunt Carries big brick farmhouse was on the way out of town, up and past the school, their barn and silo right across the street from new houses. It was out of the way.

“Didn’t make it there Mom.”

“Oh David, why not?” she said. “She would have liked to have seen you.” It was hard not to disappoint my Mom.

My kids knew who in the neighborhood gave out the best stuff, but the days of homemade popcorn balls and taffy apples were over. For my kids it was the houses that gave out full size candy bars. Mrs. Halterman gave out giant snickers, which made the bite size stuff we bought look tiny. Kids flocked to their house. When the kids came home they’d dump their candy on the living room rug and sort tit all out by type, counting it and seeing who got more. They liked the new stuff best, Nerds and War Heads, and some sour stuff that popped and fizzed in your mouth, but still treasured the Skittles and peanut butter cups. I’d examine it with them.

“You don’t really like these Almond Joys do you Dean?”

“Yea, I think I do Dad. But you can have these Smarties.” The kids gave me their less desirable stuff. I liked it all.

Dean’s best friend had to go to the hospital with his parents to X Ray his candy while we were already eating ours. Dean couldn't understand.

“What are they afraid of Dad? Monsters? The people who give us this stuff are our neighbors.” Dean was a deep thinker even at age eight.

“I know Dean. They feel differently than us.” I tried to downplay the whole fear thing associated with Halloween, but didn’t want to question his friend’s parental concerns. In other words, I thought it was nuts but I didn’t say so.

Raise your hand or reply to this e mail if you have ever seen a Gillette blue blade or any other kind of razor embedded in an apple or anything else that came out of your kids Halloween treat bag. Same for needles. Anyone personally witnessed a needle buried in a Baby Ruth? Has anyone among your family or friends experienced that? We change our behavior based on awful stories that are barely credible. They are urban myths. We live in reaction to rumor and emotion not data and experience. In the Tribune there was a story of a church which organized a trick or treating event with non scary costumes in a parking lot where church members, all known to one another, could open the backs of their mini vans and distribute candy to kids walking by them. It’s Halloween in a paranoid bubble.

Halloween is a community event. I know America isn't the same as it was in my small farm town in 1962 but Halloween is one of the few remaining ways we visit and interact as neighbors. How many people actually come to your door these days? Heck, how many people answer their phone? We so control our contact with others that the act of meeting someone new, or talking with someone we don’t know, is a very rare event. We can’t afford to lose Halloween. We can’t teach our kids to fear their neighbors. What will become of us when we’re all alone?