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As a youngster, I went through two dismal Halloweens with no tasty treats.
In Emmetsburg, Iowa, where I was born and lived until I was nearly ten years old, the Halloween celebration achieved a status that ranked right up there with the Fourth of July and V-J Day. Well, almost.
There weren't fireworks lighting up the sky after dark, but porch lights beamed from nearly every house in town, welcoming all the costumed goblins, ghosts, and witches to each door where treats o' plenty were doled out with great kindness and generosity. In a couple of hours' time, we kids hauled in more loot than the James' Gang after a train robbery, enough sweets to get our dentist gleefully warming up his drill and pricing winter homes in Jamaica.
Our M.O. was pretty much like that of Charlie Brown and the "Peanuts" gang. As soon as darkness had fallen, we'd all meet at one house, map out our 20-block strategy, then hit the ground running with large grocery sacks in tow. None of those tiny, plastic pumpkins for us! Volume was our goal.
Then one year Halloween came crashing down for me like a witch shot off her broomstick. We moved to another town across the state that discouraged the very fine art of trick-or-treating.
Worse yet, we lived there for two years! That means on two consecutive Halloweens I wasn't allowed to put on a mask and go door-to-door for candy.
Now this particular town had a twisted posture when it came to trick or treating. The civic leaders wanted to keep the kids home after dark and off front porches. Apparently, they figured if Halloween was assigned a low profile, then the town was less likely to suffer from the rueful tricks of Halloween-inspired vandals.
But their alternative to trick-or-treating stunk. The Chamber of Commerce staged a downtown parade for the youngsters and everyone who participated received a measly bag of tasteless sugar-free candy and was then scooted off the streets and sent home.
I was a well-practiced trick-or-treater. Not only was it not customary for me to walk in the door by seven o'clock on Halloween night, but to return home with less than forty pounds of goodies was a blow to my ego.
The kids in that town never balked at the deprivation, though. They didn't know any better. They hadn't experienced the joys of trotting from one house to another and being handed candy bars, caramel apples, and popcorn balls.
Personally, I was having a sugar fit! I lost weight during those two cruel years. The condition of my teeth even began to improve.
The poor dentist in that town lived in a tar paper shack and had no running water. I heard that he later moved to Pennsylvania where he set up shop across the street from the Hershey chocolate factory and became quite wealthy.
Fortunately we moved, too. We came west to Fullerton, Nebraska where trick-or-treating was happily in fashion and smiling porch lights and sugar highs were the order of the night on October 31st.
By that time, though, I was getting near the age when soon it would be no longer appropriate for me to dress up like a ghoul and demand candy from the citizens. There's a fine line between trick-or-treating and terrorism.
But I still feel like I was cheated out of those two Halloweens. It's just something you can never get back.
Or can you? Let's see. I'll need a mask and a large grocery sack and a map of the neighborhood...
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Copyright 2004 by Wendel Potter
