TRICK OR TREAT!

When I was a little kid around 5 to 7 years old (let’s say between the years of 1947 and 1949) Halloween was scary! It wasn’t the watered-down family-friendly event that today’s generation experiences. At least in my neighborhood, it wasn’t.

I was the youngest kid in my family and my older brothers and sisters all thoroughly delighted in scaring me to death! About a week before Halloween my brother would make small spiders out of thin black wire and dangle them everywhere he knew I would be walking. He had a bottle of luminescent paint that he put high up on the closet shelf -- he told me that a ghost had moved in there and to prove it, he would shove me in there and shut the door and hold it closed. The ghostly bottle glowed it’s eerie greenish glow and I would scream and cry -- delighting him to no end.

On Halloween night we dressed up as hobos (there wasn’t such a thing as store-bought costumes – and hobo clothes were what we usually wore during daylight hours anyway – so it was easy to put some soot from the stove on our noses, black out a tooth with a crayon, and tie a handkerchief onto a pruned tree limb to carry over our shoulder) and carrying a big pillow case to hold our anticipated goodies, we’d set off on our night of trick-or-treating. Candy was an uncommon treat. At Christmas we would make fudge and sometimes get some hard candies. If one of us were ever lucky to have a nickel, we’d get 5 pieces of penny candy at Ferg’s Gas Station and share it with whoever was with us. The hope of a pillowcase full of candy was worth putting your life on the line.

We lived on an apple farm in the midst of about 15 other apple farms, each farmhouse was at least a mile away from the next, and to get to each house we had to walk down long, long, long tree-lined lanes – their leafless branches reaching out to grab hapless, helpless victims. The roads and lanes were unlit and the dark orchards provided hiding places for myriads of black, evil monsters.

We had to walk by and cross a canal -- and that was the scariest part of the entire night. At the east end of Center Street in Provo all of the insane people in the state of Utah resided at the State Mental Hospital; and every year on Halloween night at least two or three dozen of the most grotesque, sadistic inmates escaped the institution and walked the banks of that canal. In hushed voices the older kids told us tales of kids they had known – and would never know again – who had walked this same path on past Halloween nights.

By the time we finally reached a house – usually lit with only one 40 watt bulb because electricity cost money – my entire body shook with fright and anticipation. We’d pound on the door and yell TRICK OR TREAT! The woman who came to door would feign shock at the site of so many ragamuffins and into each pillowcase deposit her offering.

We were all cold and worn to a frazzle by the time we got back home, anxious to see what goodies were in our bags. With great anticipation we dumped our bags onto the living room floor and out of each tumbled a dozen crisp red apples! We'd been tricked! Well, there was always next year . . . And next year we were dumb enough to do the same thing!