6:32 PM CST, and only three parties, ringing the doorbell.
A little boy in glasses, with a lighted magic wand and Hogwarts robes, another in Army cammies, and one in some sort of super-hero ninja dress.
A very tiny toddler in a stroller, dressed as a cat. Her mother expressed a fondness for chocolate.
A small ninja, accompanied by both parents, who took one single packet of glow-in-the-dark Skittles, and was pressed to take an additional Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cup.
I was thanked lavishly by all, or by their closely-hovering parents.
I went out to look up and down the road for other TrickerTreaters. None in sight, although there are a number of dogs barking from other streets. Probably safe to sit down and eat dinner.
7:34 CST: A party of four, one dressed as a Star Wars Trooper, the other four as something indistinctive. The glow-in-the-dark Skittles are the most popular. As they go down the walk, one of them loudly chides the other three for not saying “Thank You”. There is hope for this younger generation, after all.
8:00 CST: Party of 5, mostly dressed as ghouls. Most want the glow-in-the-dark Skittles. I am running short of those, and begin to push the Reeses. All 5 line up neatly, take no more than two packets of candy each, and chorus thanks.
8:05 CST; Party of 6, middle-school age, most of whom , like the previous party are dressed as ghouls or ghosts. With only one packet of glow-in-the-dark Skittles left, the taller of the two children remaining nobly yields it to the smaller. Two of them voice a preference for Reeses’ and Twix anyway.
The last two packets of candy goes to the last TrickerTreater. Wonderful how these things work out.
I turn off the porch light, and take the iron-dutch oven– in which I have stashed the candy, inside. The oven, a broom and two pumpkins on the front porch constitute my Halloween decor. When I have gotten tired of answering the door in previous years, I have just put out a sign telling them to help themselves. Would that I could train Little Arthur and Morgie to sit on the pumpkins and glower threateningly— that would have kept the greedy from taking more than two or three candy bars each.
But everything worked out even this year— just enough candy, just enough kids.
Halloween seems to have morphed into an adult holiday. We haven’t gotten more than 4 or 5 kids the entire night, for the 5 years we’ve lived here.
Comment by Kevin Connors — 20051031 @ 1916
We had two groups of trick-or-treaters here this year. More than most years. These kids, accompanied by parents brave 1000 feet of axle deep pot-holed dirt road to get here. They get fist-fulls of candy as a reward.
When my kids were young we went all up and down streets (not my street)looking for goodies. We remembered a neighbor, about 1/2 mile away who lives 1000 feet back from the road. The front of his property has an old cemetery dating back to the early 19th century. We risked the terrain, foxes, coyotes (yes we have them in Massachusetts), skunks and raccoons to trick-or-treat. The man and his wife were so happy to see children they gave the kids the whole bowl of candy. Nobody had trick-or-treated them in the 10 years they lived there, but they had candy just in case.
Comment by gdgadfly — 20051031 @ 1929
Small ninjas are great, aren’t they? Way back in the day, kids in my neighborhood had all the houses mapped out. There was one elderly lady that gave out handmade popcorn balls (obviously, I trick-or-treated in the days before tampering scares) and she was first on everybody’s list.
Comment by bad cat robot — 20051031 @ 2220
Geez, small crowds. We had over 150 kids this year - and there’s only 32 kids in the whole neighborhood. Somehow our neighborhood has achieved the status of “the rich people neighborhood.” I’ve looked at my bank account, the neighbors have looked at thiers - no of us are apparently rich. We get pickup trucks with trailers that haul 20-30 kids into our neighborhood to trick-or-treat. One year we did Halloween 2 hours earlier than the established time and then shut all our porch lights off - all the neighbor kids got to trick-or-treat and we managed to avoid the truck loads. Of course there was a lot of vandalism instead. It wouldn’t be so bad, but hardly any of the kids in the truckloads even bothers with a costume, and the normal “Thank You” is replaced with “Is that all I get you @#$&*!%! jerk?”
Comment by stikboy — 20051101 @ 1236
We had 300 or so children stop by. We started years ago giving out full size chocolate bars. Word gets around in our immigrant neighborhood. Of course, to get the treats they have to go through “the graveyard” designed by my kids. Many of the children can’t make it up the walk, it is too scary, and so someone with no costume on stands on the sidewalk and gives them something cheap as a consolation prize. It all started 36 years ago at my parents house and my son brought in some of his expertise from two years of working “Halloween Haunt” at Knott’s Berry Farm. We attract gobs of people who stand around and watch the fun. Halloween becomes more of an adult holiday every year but at our house the adults stay home and the kids go out (with my son, the cop, as an escort).
Comment by tyree — 20051101 @ 1303
A few dozen kids here - enough to go through about half my supply of candy (most of the rest gets dumped in a client’s lunch room tomorrow). Most were well behaved.
It’s a smallish, working-class neighborhood with a lot of immigrants; I think just about all these kids were local. Didn’t look like anybody’d wandered in from the nearby shiny-new yuppie apartment complexes.
I think some families may have bypassed my house owing to the lack of Halloween decorations (house lights & porch light were on, but nothing seasonal).
Comment by Eric Wilner — 20051101 @ 1957
I think “little” Authur would just crush the pumpkin or maybe just try and eat it.
Comment by Cpl Blondie — 20051102 @ 0550
One group of kids. I carved a jack-o-lantern and put gourds up and down the stairs, and one small group. (If I’d been thinking, I would have given them three times as much!)
Sometimes life in an apartment complex sucks.
Comment by B. Durbin — 20051103 @ 1935