Hallowe'en is manic-depressive in my neighborhood. I always buy a several pounds of candy, bring the cats in, put the porch light on, then wait and see. My husband and I don't go whole hog and hang spiderwebs around our porch, carve pumpkins, or tack up fluorescent skeletons, because we just don't. The most favored display around here is an all-purpose October+November combo consisting of carved pumpkins, Indian corn, and a few flats of marigolds, neatly combining Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving, and these decorations have a long shelf life. All you have to do is replace the pumpkins as they rot.
Some years, we have floods of kids, accompanied by their mommas, all costumed in drug-store outfits, their faces decorated with lipstick and glitter. Some years, we have none at all. A couple of years, we've only had large-sized teenagers, some of them wearing a mask and none of them in costume. This year we had a single big surge of kids, with their mommas shepherding them to the door. The tricksters were little and energetic, eager to get to the next house, and had no time to let me admire their costumes. That was it for this year.
I don't think I ever went trick or treating before my family moved to DC. I know my mom and dad carved pumpkins--a process that, even at three or four years of age, I thought was sickening because of the wet strings, glop, and seeds inside. But, for the most part, in Princeton and Amherst both, I lived a life indistinguishable from one lived in the 20's, 30's or even the turn of the century. We had an icebox and our block of ice was delivered by a man in a horse drawn cart. My mother made my clothes, knitted my socks and my father's socks too, and tailored his suits. Our bread was homemade, and I envied kids at school who ate store-bought Wonder Bread sandwiches made with store-bought grape jam. It wasn't until we came to DC, that life turned modern.
Just before Eisenhower was inaugurated, we moved into a vast sprawling apartment complex just outside the capitol, that went on for miles. When Hallowe'en arrived that first year, I can remember climbing into my drugstore costume, not liking it much. By October 31, the weather was bitterly cold, so having to wear a scratchy brown sweater under my princess costume and a coat on top of it, seemed to defeat its pink silken enchanting purpose. My mask was a stiffened cloth thing from Japan, decorated with an insipid girl-face whose painted colors ran, and its misaligned eye holes screwed up my vision. My little sister fared better as a hobo since she could wear some of her own clothes, and made do with burnt cork instead of a wilting mask. Also, she had the advantage of being excruciatingly cute, as I did not.
My parents impressed on me that my job as a trick or treater trekker, was to wend my way through the immense darkened complex, avoid big bullying kids, politely refuse offers of apples, all homemade and unwrapped candies because of their poison/razor blade potential, and get my sister back alive. For three or four years, after that first Hallowe'en night, our trick or treating, my sister's and mine, seemed like an elemental and dangerous journey, not a kiddie holiday at all, and I dreaded it.
We'd start in our part of the complex, which was largely benign. We knew most of the families there, and they made a special effort to leave the lights on and greet us by name. It was in the outlying reaches that things got dicey, but my sister would clamor to go there, up to looming apartments on the steep hillsides, because we could load up our Food Fair bags with outlaw swag like homemade popcorn balls, and stuff ourselves with good portion of it before going home. We were likely to get exotic treats up there too: liquor-filled chocolates, sticky tropical fruit from Hawaiian gift trays, and handfuls of change. But in this end of the complex, we were sometimes confronted with guys in their underwear who would just look at us glassily, or large messy cocktail parties that would sweep us inside, with drunken guests giving us treats like swizzle sticks, tepid canapes, and old I Like Ike buttons. Outside those apartments, as hordes of big kids swept up into the hills, my sister and I had to crouch in nearby bushes silently, and let them maraud past us like the Younger Gang.
When my sister, with her much shorter legs, began to whimper that she was really tired, our night ended. The two of us would wend our way home, quarrelling about what we'd tell our parents, all the while, marking our trail back with discarded handfuls of home-made fudge, bruised-looking apples, pennies, and campaign buttons.
Maybe it was better back then, to confront some real goblins, and have an adventure through a frightening night, before arriving at the yellow lights of home and our innocent parents. It was more thrilling than spending a dipshit night in a church basement, bobbing for apples and having an ersatz best-costume contest, where everyone got a prize no matter how lame they looked.
Or maybe that's just my own memory, telling me a story, as usual.
Was it really like that? Maybe.
Some years, we have floods of kids, accompanied by their mommas, all costumed in drug-store outfits, their faces decorated with lipstick and glitter. Some years, we have none at all. A couple of years, we've only had large-sized teenagers, some of them wearing a mask and none of them in costume. This year we had a single big surge of kids, with their mommas shepherding them to the door. The tricksters were little and energetic, eager to get to the next house, and had no time to let me admire their costumes. That was it for this year.
I don't think I ever went trick or treating before my family moved to DC. I know my mom and dad carved pumpkins--a process that, even at three or four years of age, I thought was sickening because of the wet strings, glop, and seeds inside. But, for the most part, in Princeton and Amherst both, I lived a life indistinguishable from one lived in the 20's, 30's or even the turn of the century. We had an icebox and our block of ice was delivered by a man in a horse drawn cart. My mother made my clothes, knitted my socks and my father's socks too, and tailored his suits. Our bread was homemade, and I envied kids at school who ate store-bought Wonder Bread sandwiches made with store-bought grape jam. It wasn't until we came to DC, that life turned modern.
Just before Eisenhower was inaugurated, we moved into a vast sprawling apartment complex just outside the capitol, that went on for miles. When Hallowe'en arrived that first year, I can remember climbing into my drugstore costume, not liking it much. By October 31, the weather was bitterly cold, so having to wear a scratchy brown sweater under my princess costume and a coat on top of it, seemed to defeat its pink silken enchanting purpose. My mask was a stiffened cloth thing from Japan, decorated with an insipid girl-face whose painted colors ran, and its misaligned eye holes screwed up my vision. My little sister fared better as a hobo since she could wear some of her own clothes, and made do with burnt cork instead of a wilting mask. Also, she had the advantage of being excruciatingly cute, as I did not.
My parents impressed on me that my job as a trick or treater trekker, was to wend my way through the immense darkened complex, avoid big bullying kids, politely refuse offers of apples, all homemade and unwrapped candies because of their poison/razor blade potential, and get my sister back alive. For three or four years, after that first Hallowe'en night, our trick or treating, my sister's and mine, seemed like an elemental and dangerous journey, not a kiddie holiday at all, and I dreaded it.
We'd start in our part of the complex, which was largely benign. We knew most of the families there, and they made a special effort to leave the lights on and greet us by name. It was in the outlying reaches that things got dicey, but my sister would clamor to go there, up to looming apartments on the steep hillsides, because we could load up our Food Fair bags with outlaw swag like homemade popcorn balls, and stuff ourselves with good portion of it before going home. We were likely to get exotic treats up there too: liquor-filled chocolates, sticky tropical fruit from Hawaiian gift trays, and handfuls of change. But in this end of the complex, we were sometimes confronted with guys in their underwear who would just look at us glassily, or large messy cocktail parties that would sweep us inside, with drunken guests giving us treats like swizzle sticks, tepid canapes, and old I Like Ike buttons. Outside those apartments, as hordes of big kids swept up into the hills, my sister and I had to crouch in nearby bushes silently, and let them maraud past us like the Younger Gang.
When my sister, with her much shorter legs, began to whimper that she was really tired, our night ended. The two of us would wend our way home, quarrelling about what we'd tell our parents, all the while, marking our trail back with discarded handfuls of home-made fudge, bruised-looking apples, pennies, and campaign buttons.
Maybe it was better back then, to confront some real goblins, and have an adventure through a frightening night, before arriving at the yellow lights of home and our innocent parents. It was more thrilling than spending a dipshit night in a church basement, bobbing for apples and having an ersatz best-costume contest, where everyone got a prize no matter how lame they looked.
Or maybe that's just my own memory, telling me a story, as usual.
Was it really like that? Maybe.
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