How Halloween Used To Be

Well, it’s Halloween again. As I was observing our annual pumpkin carving I asked my daughter about her strategy for tomorrow night. I was saddened to hear that the plan was to walk around to houses until she and her friends grew tired. That’s it? No battle plan? No way to store excess candy? What a sad state of affairs. After thinking it over I realized that kids today simply have too much access to candy. It isn’t such a big deal to get anymore. When I was growing up, we had candy at Easter, Christmas and Halloween. My older brother and I would start planning around Labor Day. First we needed costumes that would not weigh much so we could walk longer without wearing ourselves out. Then we needed bags that could hold a lot of candy and not break when flung around. 50 pound onion sacks were our best bags. They stretch but don’t break. Then we would get out graph paper and draw our neighborhood. Yes we actually drew it out on my father’s writing desk. Then we would mark the houses that gave the best candy the year before in one color. That way, if we were worn out we could just hit the highlights. When you’re dragging that huge bag you don’t want to waste steps for a piece of Double-Bubble. Then we would mark the people who worked later in another color. We could hit those houses after the others had run out of candy because they started giving it out later and likely just wanted to empty their bowls at the end of the night. The week before Halloween, we fitted our costumes to make sure they weren’t constraining. Halloween night Mom could make whatever she wanted and we would eat it because we weren’t going anywhere until dinner was done. (She knew it too and almost always made us eat fish sticks.) Then we set out. The route was drawn in highlighter so we would work one side of a street and turn from there. Then we could work the other sides on the way home. Our goal was to never waste steps going by houses we had already hit. We started at 5PM at the houses where we knew the mother didn’t work so she would be there with candy. We knew the map and battle plan so well that we did not bring it with us. It would be too hard to read in the dark. We would finish our sprint at about 10PM and be right by home when done. If rationed correctly and hidden from the dog and other family members, our candy would last almost till Christmas. Today the kids buy a $30 costume with accessories they will never carry. Then they get those little plastic pumpkin pales that hold about 10 pieces of candy before they are filled. Parents walk behind with spiked drinks and cigarettes, waiting at the road in case someone tried to abduct their child. The whole process is over in about an hour and a half. By then they are too tired to go on and have wasted time going back and forth across the street and to the neighbors. What a waste! I spent more on candy than they haul in. That’s a bad investment! Where is the planning? Where is the perseverance? How sad this holiday has become. And it’s all because your child can get a Snicker’s bar pretty much any time they want.