Halloween in the Last Century

Here is what Halloween was like when I was four to twelve years old. 

Kids dressed up, usually in costumes they made themselves (a bum, a football player, a dancer), though you could buy masks and cheap rayon costumes at Woolworths or TG&Y. I think one year when I was really little my mother bought us all masks -- I was Casper the Friendly Ghost, as I recall. But kids didn't really like these masks, since they were very hot to wear and also the elastic that held them on hurt your ears.

Anyway, in whatever costume we put together, we went out in packs. Little little kids, like under four, did not go trick or treating. Older than four, you went with a bunch of other kids. By the time I was six or seven, I was going with the kids my age in the neighborhood -- Debbie Moore, Karen Pettus, another girl whose name I don't remember -- and my brothers were going with the kids their age.

There were huge swarms of kids out roaming from house to house, all over the neighborhood. We didn't go outside our particular neighborhood, which was called Willowdale. From about five to about eight, we hit every single house -- there was no such thing as a house that didn't give out candy, though there were houses where "mean" people lived. Down the street, for instance, there was a guy who wouldn't give candy to anyone over six. I mean, really!

We use paper grocery bags to collect the candy, and when we came home, exhausted and triumphant, we poured the heaps of candy out on the living floor and compared our hauls. Occasionally there would be some trading -- like I hated suckers and loved those peanut butter taffy things, so I'd trade with my brother who hated peanut butter.

There weren't any decorations, as I recall, though usually people did make jack-o-lanterns and burned candles in them. And parents had only one function -- they stayed home and gave out candy. No kid would have wanted or needed a parent to walk them from house to house.

In any case, Halloween was one of the important holidays of the year for kids -- Christmas and Mardi Gras being the other two. I still remember the year I got strep throat and missed it. (I did try to go out, but had to turn back a block from the house because I felt so awful. I remember sitting on a curb trying to convince myself I could keep going.)

When my kid was little, we drove to a neighborhood that wasn't full of Evangelicals to trick-or-treat, because of course Evangelical Christians in Arkansas believe halloween is worshipping the devil. I did walk my kid and his friends around the neighborhood, and almost always any kids under about ten had parents walking with them. Kids older than ten still went with their friends. Lots of houses shut their lights off, the accepted signal for 'we don't celebrate halloween here.'

In our recent neighborhood, there was no Halloween. Maybe this was because it was an Evangelical neighborhood? There were a lot of Trump signs.

Here in this new neighborhood, I did see people trick-r-treating. But not only did they all have parents with them, their parents were driving them from house to house. Long trains of cars wound through the streets, stopping every few houses to let the kids out.

Our street is last one in the neighborhood -- surrounded by a green space and a golf course -- and mostly trains of cars didn't make it this far. I only saw a few kids older than ten or so out on their own. They looked lost and confused. I stayed home with the candy, as is my role, but only three different sets of kids came by. This is probably because I didn't put out any decorations, which seems, here, to be the sign for 'we celebrate halloween, come knock on the door.'

I suppose Halloween in the 1960s and 1970s was a bigger (and freer) deal because there were so many more kids back then. Also, the 24/7 news cycle had not yet been invented, and parents didn't know letting your kid run the neighborhood unsupervised was dangerous. 

Next year I'll get some lights and a giant inflatable pumpkin.