Halloween
to me means the one time a year I purchase candy. And because I never
know how many Trick or Treaters to expect, anywhere from 0 to 20,
which is small, I know, but it's a cul de sac, and the firemen put on
a party at the school, for safety's sake, so fewer revellers wander
this dark end of town. Just to be safe, I only buy candy which I
like, on the theory that I may be forced to eat it later, if too few
kids arrive.
About
being a kid at Halloween, I remember the dread of trying to come up
with costume ideas and being jealous of the kids who had access to
the figure skating costume closet, or to older siblings or parents
who had this sort of imagination. And I remember the weather. As we
lived on a farm, we costumed up and then were driven into town to go
Trick or Treating. I remember that in the seventeen years I lived
there, there was perhaps only one or two years when there was snow on
Halloween. This could be disastrous if you were using a paper
shopping bag as a collecting tool, and the bag dragged on the ground,
got soaked, and released your precious collection in dribbles or in
one big tragic drench.
The best
Halloween I remember was at university, the University of Manitoba,
in Fort Garry, Winnipeg, (Manitoba, Canada) in the late 1960s. Many
"gangs" went around campus streamering the bare trees with
toilet paper. But if you had the good luck to be dating an
engineering student, you could get invited to their own imaginative
Trick or Treating. Just bring an empty beer mug, and hold it up when
someone answered each door bell. We gathered on campus and then
walked into the surrounding suburb, Fort Richmond, where many
university people resided. Of course, as we were walking, we were not
creating a driving hazard, and, as we were in larger groups, we were
not making ourselves obvious targets for victimization. I believe the
only costumes we wore were the famous brown and gold Engineering
Faculty team bomber jackets, and probably ball caps. Most of the
people who answered the doorbells just laughed and came back with
brown bottles to pour, emptying them into our proffered cups. It was
a trick which garnered a well-enjoyed treat. Chug-a-Lug. And I still
have my mug.
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