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Published on 10/28/1996 All articles from this issue

Take me back to that old-time Halloween

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By Clyde Noel

Every holiday was a joy where I grew up, but Halloween is still one of my favorites. It's a day for children dressed as witches, goblins and monsters running through the streets with bags in hand, ringing doorbells and saying "trick or treat." It's also a day of giggles and mischievous tricks and panic sprints in unexplored neighborhoods.

The perfect age for Halloween is between 9 and 12, and I should point out that "trick or treat" is a relatively new commercial development in the celebration of this spooky holiday.

In my day, once you reached the age of 9, you were old enough to get into a little innocent trouble without the grownups leading you from house to house. It now became a tactical search-and-destroy mission to smash pumpkins and chalk up windows.

Halloween usually began in school when the teacher hung cardboard skeletons on the wall, and we drew pictures of pumpkins with scary faces and stuck them on the window.

The real fun started after the last bell when you walked home from school and checked out the houses you would visit.

The merchants on Main Street knew their windows were going to get soaped on Halloween night when kids would take a bar of soap and draw pictures or write someone else's name on their storefront windows. Many of the retailers washed their windows the next morning for the first time that year.

There was something unfunny-looking when you walked past the elementary school and noticed wet toilet paper dripping off the shrubbery and trees and wax on the front door.

Then three or four of your prankster chums would get up enough nerve to sneak up to old Mrs. Lutzmann's front porch to "trick or treat" her. You were convinced she was a witch and it took all the courage you could muster to stand there when she opened the door.

She stared through the screen door menacingly for a few moments, then broke into a warm and toothless grin as she offered you a candy apple. All the time she was laughing and lying through her teeth that she couldn't imagine who you might be. Then you walk away feeling brave.

Word came down that Mr. Schultz was passing out full-sized Milky Ways and you made a special three-block trip just to get one.

Then about that time you found a couple of pumpkins that weren't smashed, and you succeeded in that squashy antic.

Those were the good old days of Halloween. Now dentists tell you sugar is bad for you and don't eat any candy, and parents have to inspect each piece of booty for signs of tampering, and you wouldn't take any candy apples because you never know what people might put inside.

I'm probably being a little maudlin, but if you should find at your door this Halloween a 6-foot trick-or-treater with a familiar sounding voice trying to talk through a half mask and carrying a red wine glass in his hand, humor him. He only wants you to pour a little red zinfandel because he's looking for a little of that old-time fun again.