Halloween when you were a kid: fun, not fun, never did it, etc ?

[steve2470]

I did Halloween up until I was about 10 I think. This was the 1960's (I'm 61). Absolutely no one worried about poison or razor blades in the candy (has that happened a lot ?). I feel sad for kids these days that their parents feel compelled to x-ray their candy to make sure it's not harmful. Yes, the good old days (at least for me).

Did you do Halloween as a kid ?

[demmiblue]

1. Fun (also, no one x-rays candy. Lol!)

One sad things I have noticed over the years... there are a lot fewer households with their porch lights on.

[steve2470]

2. I read somewhere that some parents were going to hospitals to X-ray candy

I guess that was an urban legend.

[qazplm135]

5. no it just happened later

70s and 80s.

[hlthe2b]

8. It defintely is a "thing"--just not during the time period of the OP (nor even several years later)

[steve2470]

9. yes I never heard of it when I was a child, and only starting maybe in the 1980's ? nt

[demmiblue]

13. Speaking for myself, it seemed to be one of those over-produced TV scare stories.

I didn't know anyone during that time period who actually had their candy x-rayed.

[3Hotdogs]

30. In your wildest imagination, can you envision hundreds of parents, lining up outside the E.R.,

asking that apples, candy corn, candy bars and popped corn be xrayed?

If so,

can you then, imagine a hospital complying with such nonsense?

[steve2470]

38. yes excellent points nt

[RobinA]

69. No, This Actually

happened. My father was a radiologist and he used to go in on Halloween night and x-ray candy. The myth was that there was ever a good reason to do it.

[amywalk]

72. Yes, I believe it was. I never, ever saw or heard of families in our town

of finding razor blades or poison in their kids Halloween candy. I never witnessed anything bad happening during my Trick or Treating years in the 60/70’s or my children trick or treating in the 90’s/early2000’s.

[qazplm135]

3. I love sweets so fun

thing I stopped right before high school.

I think my fav memory was dressing up as Chewbacca in the late 70s when my mom took some carpet and made a costume with a mask. I was a huge star wars fan as a kid.

[steve2470]

17. great costume! nt

[Floyd R. Turbo]

4. Loved it! Always made our own costumes and makeup. Also remember collecting pennies for unicef

in a little orange milk carton.🎃

[unblock]

10. yes! imagine that today.

what a lovely costume! ah, unicef! of course i'd love to donate one cent! do you take apple pay?

[Floyd R. Turbo]

14. Not sure if they still do it. Certainly not in my area. I do recall a few years ago reading letters

to the Editor bitching about kids being forced to fund raise for unicef!

[steve2470]

12. yes I remember the little UNICEF cartons, I never collected very much

It was great fun to make your own costume, no matter how "good" or bad it was!

[50 Shades Of Blue]

6. So much fun! Did it every year until I was 12 in 1964.

[hlthe2b]

7. Always turned so cold we had to cover our costumes with coats--bummer.

The best house in the neighborhood was immediately "known" as there was a line running around the corner. Typically it was a house owned by the guy who worked for a candy distributor and would give out entire full-size boxes of chocolate-covered cherries or the like... Great for gluttonous kids...LOL We did have little lanterns we carried shaped like pumpkins--that were glass! Unbelievable now, but I don't recall us ever breaking one. Not sure how long my Mom had had them (my guess they were older than the time), but she pulled them out every year.

No, this was a bit later than your period, but we also didn't have to worry about x-raying candy. I can even remember eating a caramel apple collected on the "rounds." And older, but still pretty young kids could go house to house without adults.

And, I never recall any vandalism--even "TPing" a house that was ignoring Halloween.

Outside of the disappointment re: showing off costumes, it was a good time. I feel badly that things have changed so dramatically since then.

[LeftInTX]

52. Yes... I hated wearing a coat

[unblock]

11. what are you talking about? the free razor blades was the best part!

[stopdiggin]

15. old enough to shave? and still trick-or-treating?

how many grades did you say you were behind?

[wasupaloopa]

16. As kids we did black face for trick or treat. That was in the 50's. So much of what we did was

racist but it was not though of that way then. Like the confederate flag and using the n word. We had no notion that we were hurting anyone, or maybe we just didn't care, or maybe we wanted to hurt someone. We did not see that we had privilege to do those things.

We took the lead from our parents.

[Ohiogal]

18. Fun, for the most part

I also remember many times it being so cold you had to figure out a way to dress for winter and wear a costume at the same time. I remember a few times that it snowed on Halloween. I probably went trick-or-treating until I was 12. (I'm 63 now, so these memories are from the '60s). My Dad went with me and my sister when we were small, once we got older we went with our friends. We always came home with a big bag full of candy and my parents didn't have to worry about what was in it.

I remember being mad at my mother one year because she would not let me dress up as a "hobo" ..... she said that was not an appropriate costume for a little girl!

My husband (he's 72) said when he was a kid, he and his friends trick-or-treated for about 3 days prior to Halloween as well as on Halloween!

[smirkymonkey]

55. I always thought it was fun, but I remember one year when it was very cold, my parents made me

bundle up with long-underwear, sweaters and a wind-breaker under my beautiful princess dress that we found at a tag sale (it was a little big on me, but I had my heart set on it). I was so upset. It was this lovely red and pink velvet dress with white chiffon sleeves and collar and I ended up looking like a stuffed sausage after they bundled me up under the dress. I still went out trick-or-treating and got a lot of candy, but it was kind of a bummer.

Another time, I went to a Halloween party as a ghost and was trying to eat a hot-dog w/ mustard while still in costume but I ended up getting mustard all over the mouth of my costume and had to go out trick-or-treating like that. I think it would have been scarier and more effective if it was ketchup!

[stopdiggin]

19. poison candy and foreign objects are mostly urban legends

Which is not to say it didn't have great currency, and widespread acceptance .. even in official ranks and office holders .. which didn't help at all. And then add on the "better safe than sorry" mentality.

Yeah .. there might be a stray freak or two out there (isn't there always?). And a handful of hoaxers (isn't there always?). But basically this a "thing" that didn't really happen.

[Aristus]

20. Halloween, 1978 - Luke Skywalker.

I made my own costume out of a pair of tan jeans, one of my sister's sweaters, some leg wraps and a pair of carpet slippers.

I had the toy Stormtrooper blaster as a prop, because the toy lightsabers back then sucked.

Loved Halloween...

[dameatball]

21. Loved it! I started about 1957. We went in a small group of just kids. What a great way to have

a lot of fun, have some freedom (later figured out the parents were driving around or calling other parents to check on us) and get some free candy. We did collect for UNICEF at least a couple times.

One time we went around a couple of days after Halloween and tried to sell candy back to the neighbors at 1cent a piece. My mother was mortified and called all the neighbors to apologize. Hey, we thought we had a racket going.

[TlalocW]

22. Lived in a small farming town

We walked around by ourselves (age 6). This was the late 70s/early 80s. Random memories.

1. Costumes were the ones sold in boxes with the plastic window that showed the mask that you could barely see out of with the rubber band that would break after 3 houses. Our eyesight was so bad in them that we trick-or-treated at a house, walked back to the sidewalk, walked a ways then trick-or-treated at the same house at a different door (it was a big house).
2. We would literally hit at least 50% of the town.
3. I remember a neighbor across the street answering the door in a scary costume, holding a realistic stuffed snake and trying to scare us when he opened the door. We all went, "Trick-or-treat, Mister Tjaden!" and I saw his shoulders slump in disappointment.
4. One year the town tried to have Trick-or-Treating on the weekend before Halloween so some of us went out, and all the houses we hit, the adults were confused but still gave us some candy. So we went out again on actual Halloween.
5. There was a tree right at the edge of a neighbor's yard close to the street with a really weak, discolored street light next to it. It was a couple houses down from mine. I always experienced dread walking by it in the dark especially on Halloween. Some of the other kids said so as well.
6. Was Batman like four years in a row. Made it easy on Mom who would either save the costume or go buy a new one (the kind mentioned in number 1) at KMart.
7. Music teacher would play Halloween songs. I wish I knew what record she had.
8. In high school, friends and I would go to the nearby big city or out into the country to go to Haunted Houses. We met at a church and piled into two cars - boys in mine, girls in another - to go. We got back to the church before the girls, and I decided we should hide my car and then hide around all the other cars telling the boys to jump out when one of the girls inevitably said something about beating the boys back. We did so perfectly timed.
9. My dad semi-retired during my high school years and would sell produce he either grew or got from a cousin, including pumpkins. Every evening, it was my job to load the pumpkins on the trailer and take them into the backyard and then move them back to the front the next morning. On Halloween, I asked my dad if he wanted me to move the remaining unsold ones (about a dozen and a half) as it was getting dark. He said no. I was kind of confused until that morning at 3 am. We lived on about an acre of land, and our driveway went into the backyard and did a half circle that led to the attached garage. In other words, our garage doors faced the backyard. I was a paperboy and would deliver them at around 3 in the morning on a little mo-ped. I came around the house to see the front yard completely empty of pumpkins, but then I saw their remnants smashed all along the street, other people's driveways, and even one thrown through the windshield of a car. Dad knew we couldn't sell them, and letting them get stolen was the easiest way to get rid of them.

Also the razor blades/poison in candy is pretty much an urban legend. There was one case (in 1974) of a father placing poison-infused Pixie Sticks in his son's Halloween candy (as well as in some of his cousins' to make it look like there was a mad poisoner) so he could collect on an insurance policy he had on his son. The son did die (the cousins fortunately did not eat their Pixie Stix), and the dad was arrested. Another kid got into his uncle's heroin stash, and his parents sprinkled heroin over the kid's candy to make it look the candy was the culprit. There have been several other instances of kids getting sick/dying where Halloween candy was initially blamed but was ultimately shown not to be the cause.

The stories got a lot of help sticking around during the Satanic Panic of the 70s/80s (D&D was a gateway to hell, backward masking in records, etc) thank to certain preachers and religious nuts who hated Halloween, especially Jack T. Chick of Chick Tract fame, who put out tract about how Satanists attempting to curry favor with the Devil were behind the poisonings.

Here are a couple guys who do humorous "theatrical" readings of Chick Tracts tackling that particular one.

TlalocW

[EricaGriswoldAuthor]

47. yup remember the plastic costumes.

thank goodness my mom made my costumes.

here is a picture of my friends and I in 1987. I'm the one with the orange yarn hair. My friend had one of those plastic costumes and we have a video of her parents asking her to put on her costume and you can hear her yell, "I don't want anyone to laugh at me!"

[link:?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds|

[rurallib]

23. We always had the day after Halloween out of school - so we did it up big time

I was Catholic and the next day was a holy day - All Saints day.

[ProudLib72]

24. My friend and I used to go to the rich neighborhood where they gave out the full sized candy bars

I recall filling about half a large paper grocery bag, giving it away to my friend's younger brother, then heading out for another round. Those were the days!

The biggest safety concern back then was the "tainted" smiley face stickers. We were sure those would probably kill you, but now I wish I had some.

[Texasgal]

25. We trick or treated for

Unicef. It was fun... we got a little bit of candy...but nothing like the other kids.

We dressed up and went out with our Unicef boxes. This was in the 70's and my parents were complete hippies that were worried about my brother and I getting too much candy! LOL!

[radical noodle]

36. I did that too

That was the only way I ever did trick or treating. It was in the late 50s and early 60s I think. My parents didn't mind the candy, but I was taught to do for others rather than myself.

[jberryhill]

26. The complete idiocy of the "razor blade in candy" nonsense...

...is mind boggling.

Think about it.

If you wanted to harm children, there are so many better ways to do that than by using a mechanism that is, literally, traceable to your front door.

You could put harmful things in food IN THE SUPERMARKET or convenience store or wherever, and achieve the same result without the risk of being on a very limited number of suspects that a small child actually visits on a Halloween evening outing.

Here’s a mind bending concept. Teach your kids not to eat packaged products if the package appears to have been compromised. Yeah, sure, some psycho is going to meticulously ensure that the tampered snickers wrapper is carefully resealed and, again, hand it out from the front door of his residence.

[steve2470]

39. excellent points, yes nt

[llmart]

62. Ranks right up there with the missing kids on the milk cartons.

Years later I read an article that said the majority of those missing kids were non-custodial parents taking the kids.

[sprinkleeninow]

27. In the fifties. Fun. Baton twirling majorette. Ma had to put an empty

oatmeal container in my costume head-dress. Whatever that thingy was called. I had big rosy circles on my cheeks too. I dunno if that was her idea or what. 🤔 😆

[Permanut]

28. Well,not exactly a kid,..

Dressed as a biker - leather jacket, red bandana, bag of powdered sugar in my pocket along with a parole officer's card, switchblade, and drove my Dad's bike to work. Got pulled over by local police and had a good laugh with him when he figured out I was a fake.

[Skittles]

29. only did it when I was in America

I can only really remember a couple of times, in Madison Wisconsin......back then, kids could go unattended far and wide, and that's what me and my brothers did - were got TONS of candy

[MontanaMama]

31. My favorite holiday hands down.

You all would be shocked of I told you all the hours it took me to get my outside Halloween decorations out....it takes at least two days. I won’t even go into inside decorations! I loved it as a kid...my mom hated it....it’s probably one of the reasons I loved it as much as I do. I spent weeks planning my costumes. October feels like magic to me that lasts through Dia de los muertos which I also celebrate. My birthday is the 29th so when I was a kiddo it seemed like a big long celebration from birthday through Day of the Dead.

[3Hotdogs]

32. In our town, it started with the costume parade assembly at the elementary school.

After school was T or T in the neighborhood. It was a race to hit as many houses as you could and load up the candy bags.

Then --- 7 pm, the town parade started with $$ prizes for best costumes and ending with cider, donuts or coffee which was provided by the Chamber of Commerce.

Then we went home and ate ourselves sick for the next week.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

33. Loved every minute of it as a kid.

We made our costumes (with Mum's help), none of those plastic masks with the cheapy plastic string that broke after 5 minutes.

We went all over the place - street after street - all of the homes decorated up. Every home gave out candy. Some of the folks handing out the candy were dressed up too. Some years, when the weather was cold, we'd be invited inside for a moment to warm up. Pictures were always taken of the more creative costumes. One of the women on our street made caramel apples -on the spot - for each of us. One year she made us donuts and hot apple cider. We got lots of quality candy plus home-made things like caramel-popcorn balls and brownie tarts. Never ever had to check over the candy for needles or razor blades. All night long, we'd cluster in spots along the houses and compare/swap candy and eat a few. The older kids would keep an eye on the younger kids, so eveyone was safe. No one ever got hurt, no one ever got poisoned. It was innocent fun.

Sadly, I hear it's not like that anymore. And I think that's sad, as it was such an innocent time for us.
It was also a great way to meet with new neighbors and connect with others and just spend a night of being goofy in costume and having fun.

Ahhhh, the days of blissful ignorance of what was to come.

[PatrickforO]

34. Yep. I'm 60 and did it until I was about 10 as well. Maybe 11.

We never had to worry about razor blades or poison or anything, and my mother used to make popcorn balls every Halloween to give out to trick or treaters. When I was maybe 10, someone smashed one of the popcorn balls on our driveway and that was it for those. Next year she gave out some kind of candy.

Life used to be different, didn't it?

[steve2470]

66. In that instance, I think we can all safely say things were better

Such pure childish joy, wandering around getting candy and having fun with costumes on. On my best Halloweens, I got a bulging bag of candy far too big to eat in one day. I would eat candy for a whole week LOL and probably got a cavity LOL.....

I went to a party one time and did the dunking for apples things, so much fun! It was amazingly hard to bite an apple and lift it out of the water!

If I ever have grandkids (my son is 23 and has no kids yet), I wish they have the same joy.

[radical noodle]

35. I always did Trick or Treat for UNICEF

I didn't get much candy out of the deal, although occasionally someone would give me candy in addition to the contribution. I felt good about doing it, and had a good time.

[yellowdogintexas]

37. #1 Miss Willie Mae's home made popcorn balls

you had to get over there early before they were all gone. THose things were legendary. Other folks had home made goodies but those popcorn balls were the ultimate.

Every house gave out something. One old lady sent us home with 2 bags of candy: one for us and one for our dad. First thing he wanted to know was if Miss Jessie gave us candy for him, and we gave it to him. It turned out his candy was bourbon balls!!!

When I was in second grade, our teacher invited everyone to stop at her house for trick or treats. First, you have to know she lived with her mom and old maid sister in a fairly creepy Victorian right across the street from our school. Big wraparound porch etc

So we get there, knock on the door and here comes Miss Walker in a full blown witch outfit, with a broom and everything. In the living room is an old lard pot ( huge cast iron cauldron) with dry ice in it to make it smoke. Her sister was also dressed up as a witch and she "stirred" the cauldron. Their ancient mother just sat in the rocking chair and slowly rocked back and forth with this tiny smile on her face...it was a hoot.

I did Halloween up untl I went to college. Just about the time I got to the point where I might have stopped, my baby sister was 3 and ready to go out so my friends and I took her trick or treating..

We had older boys hiding in bushes to jump out and scare us, of course.

[shadowmayor]

54. Yes indeed

The Wheeler's always had popcorn balls and other neighbors served caramel apples. We all knew the razors and LSD was BS.

[appleannie1]

40. My siblings and I always found things to make our own costumes and marched in the parade and ran all

over the neighborhood with bags scoring candy and apples. It was our second favorite holiday. As an adult, before we moved to the country, I loved passing out candy to all the trick or treaters that came knocking at our door. Where I live now, we do not get any kids and I miss it.

[lark]

41. Oh yes, I'm 67 and Fundamentalists hadn't turned against Haloween when I was a kid.

We went trick or treating in the neighborhood every year until I was 13 and then we went to a church Harvest Festival. Halloween was so much fun, getting the right costume, putting together all the accessories, face paint, etc., then putting on your finery, getting pictures taken, and finally you get to go and get candy, see friends, check out the neighbors who had "haunted houses" or some kind of spooky display, get oohed and ahhed over by neighbor friends parents, trading candy with friends along the route, then coming home and my sister and I dumping out our loot, giving mom and dad a few pieces each, inventorying our stash, more trading and of course all the yummy chocolate. Oh, and my kids did the same thing so then got to enjoy it from a different perspective. Win/win.

[EricaGriswoldAuthor]

42. 33 and still dress up...

Currently trying to figure out how to make Fawkes the Phoenix wings.

No I don't trick or treat lol!

But I play in an an orchestra and the players do a halloween concert and we wear costumes. We are doing a Harry Potter concert again this year. I also go to local comic conventions sometimes and wear costumes.

Kids at my college trick or treated. The professors asked us to come to their houses and show them our costumes.

[randr]

43. We had "mischief night" before Halloween

Mostly soaping car windows and TPing lawns. Mostly just a night to roam the neighborhood and act rowdy.

[IronLionZion]

44. We would call ahead and only go to people we knew

We would never go to a stranger's house for trick or treating.

Of course I knew some classmates who did this aggressively and planned out which neighboring towns to go to on which nights to max out their candy.

What's even weirder for me are how many adults are into this now. I don't even bother with costumes or going out to bars these days yet I have millennial adults showing up at my apartment asking for candy. I might have to pretend I'm not home. Last year I went on vacation to Iceland for the week.

[Blue_playwright]

45. Meh.

I lived in a neighborhood with mostly older folks. Dad would take me out for 30 minutes, maybe, and we’d have maybe 5-6 trick or treaters. No fun out, no fun handing out candy. It was a snooze fest.

[hunter]

46. We did not celebrate Halloween when my mom was a Jehovah's Witness.

She eventually got booted out of the religion because she couldn't stay out of politics. Soon after she decided it *might* be okay to celebrate Halloween. The first year I was too nervous to go out so I stayed home and handed out candy.

I remember two traditional Halloweens where I was running around freely with friends, not having fits of autistic spectrum anxiety, but that was after I'd returned younger siblings home from their rounds, which seemed to me a huge responsibility. Then we moved overseas where they didn't celebrate Halloween, but they had huge bonfires which were way better, especially with everyone running around drunk and I was just starting to think sex might be fun, but I was far too timid to pursue it.

Our family returned to the U.S.A. and I quit high school for college. I hated high school.

In college I tried to celebrate Halloween twice, but there was some really bad shit going on in my life then. I didn't drink or do drugs because I didn't need them to go tripping. (My brain went a little sideways in adolescence...) I'd have bad weeks where hallucinations were constant companions. The first college Halloween I chose to celebrate someone ended up taking me back to an apartment I shared with some other guys and told me to stay there. I took off my costume and went off to the computer lab, which is mostly where I lived then. Less than a month later my girlfriend's girlfriend tried to kill herself, I got in a fight with a teaching assistant, etc., and it was strongly "suggested" I take a break from school, which I did. I'm still haunted by all that.

The next college Halloween I'll not talk about except to say you shouldn't dress up as a dangerous and notorious psycho when you are a mentally ill person yourself, even if you are mostly harmless. Someone will call the police. That was my last wild Halloween.

I did manage to get my head together and graduate from college.

My wife and I still live in the same neighborhood we raised our children in. Our children have moved off to big cities but many of their classmates have stayed and are now bringing their own children around trick-or-treating. They remark how they remember coming to our house when they were children themselves. We still have many of the same decorations, scary music, etc., only the dogs have changed.

[oswaldactedalone]

48. "Trick or treat for Unicef"

Probably 4th grade, got those dimes for unicef and candy for the bag. No way we weren’t getting candy. The razor blade in the candy was just part of scaring kids on Halloween. Unfortunately, parents got caught up in it and warned you ahead of time. Once the candy went in the bag, worry about razor blades went out the window.

There was no hint of anyone having religious objections to Halloween in the years 1960-67, my trick or treating days.

[AllaN01Bear]

49. when my late mom was a litle girl( great depression era 1.0) she would listen to spookey shows on

the radio and later ( when police radio was at either end of the a.m broadcast band 1600 and 540 kc respectivly.) shed listen to police calls on the radio ,such as , ms jones being squirted by kids using seltzer water , over , and stuff like that.theyd also go to parties . in my era ,1960s, had lots of fun. dont know when i quit going out .

[bottomofthehill]

50. Great fun

Night out with friends. Always a good time.

[applegrove]

51. We were not allowed any candy that was not wrapped or things like

Apples. I had a friend whose mom only gave out Apples. I felt sorry for her because she was doing the right thing but in the 1970s we were afraid of razor blades in apples. We also had UNICEF donation boxes and people would put small change in them at every house.

[LeftInTX]

53. Fun...I'm almost 63

The thing I didn't like: It was almost always on a school night!

[ThoughtCriminal]

56. 1960's - Lame, uncomfortable, store-bought costumes, mostly crappy candy, cold weather.

Overrated.

[world wide wally]

57. A family from Poland moved in across the street a week or two before Halloween

They had a 6 year old little boy with eyeglasses as thick as Coke bottles.
My brother took Ginta trick or treating for the first time in his life. Ginta couldn't believe how wonderful America was when he got so much free candy.
Since he didn't know a word of English, all he could say was, "Candy" and hold out his bag. People naturally filled his bag with the sweet goodies.
Ginta didn't realize it was a special day and went door to door with his bag saying "Candy" for a week afterwards. People who had candy were glad to accommodate him.

That is the best Halloween story I have

[wnylib]

58. Fun and safe for us

We dressed up for school (grade school). Around 10 am the whole school paraded around the block and we got to see costumes in other classes and grades. Neighbors of the school lined the streets to ogle us and say their "ohs" and "aaws." We usually made our own costumes and loved the creative challenge.

Trick or treating meant going with my 2 older brothers. Pretty safe then (1950's) but we were told to NEVER go inside the house of people we didn't know well. My brothers' job was to get me across streets safely and back home on time. They also knew the best houses to go to.

One year the oldest brother pulled a prank and swore me to secrecy. Our family belonged to a large Protestant denomination that did not object to Halloween but our pastor did not approve and always preached against it. He lived 5 blocks away from us.

So we went to his house disguised in our costumes. The house was dark and shades were drawn. My brothers went on the porch and heard the TV on inside. I stayed on the lawn. They waxed the windows and wrapped toilet paper around the porch posts and railing, very quietly. Then they stuck a thumb tack in the doorbell and leaped over the railing, grabbed my arm, and ran into the park acoss the street. They laughed as they watched him pull out the tack and rip off rhe toilet paper.

I never told anyone.

[LakeArenal]

59. Fun. My mom made great costumes

[northoftheborder]

60. Halloween fun in the 40's

NO purchased costumes for our family, except for masks. Old sheets became ghosts, various tacky clothing for witches. We carried confetti for "tricks" and sprinkled liberally on any doors which did not offer "treats". Totally safe in our neighborhood, no adults along to supervise.

[Niagara]

61. I celebrated Halloween as a kid, and still do

I got my pick of Halloween costumes as a kid. When I was in 2nd grade, my grandmother hand made a black cat costume that had ears on the hood, a stuffed tail and stirrups that went over my shoes. In the 5th grade, I wanted to be a witch, so my grandmother made the costume for me complete with a pointy witch hat.

In elementary school, each class would parade around the school to show off their costumes to other classes. We always started with the Kindergartners and worked up to the older students. There were prizes given out for the favorite costumes.

I came very close to missing Trick or Treating in the 1st grade. I wanted to be Bugs Bunny and my mom purchased one of those Ben Cooper/Collegeville costumes. Those costumes had a mask with a vinyl type of material that are put on over clothes. I was out running around like a banshee while scoring my candy loot. When we got back home, I took off my mask and my mom said "OMG!". I was covered from head to toe with chicken pox. Obviously, I already had the chicken pox virus before going Trick or Treating, but I think getting all hot and sweaty under that costume made them appear quicker. If those spots would have shown up before Trick or Treating, I would have been out of the candy loot race.

[llmart]

63. I only got to go trick or treating a couple of years.

We lived out in the country where there were a lot of farms/nurseries. We had one house next door to us but then any other houses were really a hike away and on a busy highway. I only remember going out about three times in my childhood. My father was mean and if he was in a bad mood he wouldn't drive us around. The very first time I went out I think I was about 8 and I couldn't believe people would just give me candy. My mother would do her best to make homemade popcorn balls and let us bob for apples on a string on the enclosed front porch. I hated that my father was so cruel to us when we were kids, so when my two children were little, I vowed I would make holidays happy and fun for them. To this day, they both talk about how much they loved Halloween as kids. They always had homemade costumes, we carved pumpkins, we lived in a lovely neighborhood where there were lots of kids and everyone took part in trick or treating. One of the men who took his kids around would go from house to house with his kids and he'd be drinking a beer! So I'd always offer him one for the rest of his evening. One woman dressed up as a witch with the dry ice in the cauldron. I had a record of spooky sounds and played it really loud on our stereo. For my kids, it wasn't so much about the candy. They just loved the costumes and rest of the fun. I am so glad I gave my kids those wonderful memories because so many of my childhood memories were pretty sad.

I live in a condo complex of mostly seniors and we never get any trick or treaters. I hate it. I used to love seeing all the little neighborhood children.

[benld74]

64. Recall fondly

Small town. Parade winding up at the HS football field. We got a bag with Apple, orange, cracker jacks, candy bars.
Then 2 nights trick or treating for more stuff.
When they stopped doing the parade some years we got 3 nights t or t on the town
Did this from 6-12 yrs of age. After that it became toilet papering houses. Soaping windows. Throwing corn kernels from shucked corn against houses.

[benld74]

65. Anyone know what Corning a House is?

[imavoter]

67. Haloween as a kid in the DFW area

so cold that either you were glad to have your costume over your clothes,
or so cold it was pointless and had to wear your coat over your costume...

OR

so hot it was unbearable to wear a costume.

we never knew which one we were gonna get

[Mr.Bill]

68. It was really fun in the late 50s.

Lots of home made stuff, cookies, brownies, etc. Actually more of that than store-bought candy. My earliest memory was at about five years old. I had two older brothers to go with me, so mom and dad figured we were safe. We lived in a huge apartment complex, so lots of doors to knock on with minimal walking. I bet we hit over 100 apartments, and literally filled a shopping bag with stuff.

We live in a Senior Mobile Home Park now and haven't seen one kid come around in years. It's mostly because the schools and the city put on events for them, so I guess they have fun there.

[RobinA]

70. I'm 62

Loved it. Started out with a store bought witch and when I grew out of that I made my own, as did my sister when she grew out of the witch after me. I didn’t like it when it was cold, but we usually forgot about that after we got going.

When we were little kids our mother took us to relatives. When we got a little older we went in our neighborhood ourselves. Tons of kids were out. Back then if you were school-aged you wouldn’t be caught dead being followed around by [gag] grown-ups. I absolutely loved my little orange UNICEF coin box. My sister always forgot hers, but I would carefully put mine together and ask for donations. It made me feel like a productive part of the adult world, which kids don’t get to feel much. To this day I like UNICEF.

Not that getting candy wasn’t fun. Back then you got real candy bars, not these Munchkin sized things. Except from the misguided souls who gave out Good’n’Plenties . Milky Ways were big then, but I liked Reese’s and Almond Joys, which were rare.

[bif]

71. My brother and I did it until we were in our 30s!

Loved getting free candy. When were were older, we'd tag along with some little kids and squat down until we got the candy.