WHEN I WAS A KID

WHEN I WAS A KID, I hated it when adults began any sentence by saying, “When I was a kid…” Another adult comment which I disliked was, “I remember you when you were just this big.” I wanted to say something back to them like, “Yeah, well I remember you when you were not so damn fat” but, I didn’t dare say anything like that. I guess I just grunted in defeat. Now, I fall into the same traps. I see my niece and nephews every few months and they seem to grow like weeds. I have to bite my tongue.

WHEN I WAS A KID, I remember the adults telling me about the holidays when they were kids. Halloween was particularly interesting. My step-dad told us that people who were disliked by the kids were especially vulnerable. The year was around 1927. The adults could get in the proverbial dog house if they were mean throughout the year or just because they failed to give away popcorn balls or candy apples or other sufficient treats for the holidays. Apparently, in those days, the kids took the “Trick” part of “Trick or Treat” much more seriously. It was a form of blackmail.

Translated, it would be, “Give us something good or you will be punished.” And they meant it. If the adults failed the little goblins they were subjected to pranks such as having their home TP’d or their windows soaped (write on them with bars of soap). But my step-father and his friends had even worse plans for the people who deserved a more severe “punishment”. He tells me that one time they pushed over a cranky old man when he was in his outhouse and on several occasions they would gather up some dog poop (or their own) and put it in a paper sack. Then they would sneak up on their victim’s porch and light the bag on fire and ring the doorbell and run away. Apparently the victim would open the door, see the fire and stomp on the bag to put it out. My step-dad laughed so hard when he told us the story I thought he was going to cry.

WHEN I WAS A KID, we had a different version of Halloween. Outhouses had all been replaced by indoor plumbing and packaged candy replaced home-made popcorn balls and candy apples. We were less interested in “Tricks” and more interested in “Treats”; lots and lots of treats. After school we ran home and turned our pillow cases into large storage sacks. We started banging on doors by about 5:30. The object was to get to as many as houses as we could before people turned their lights out. We worked our way from our lower-middle class neighborhood toward the better neighborhoods that were a mile or so away. The object was to get to about two-hundred homes. On the way back we remembered the homes that had the better treats and we hit them again. We stayed out until about 10:00 hitting any house which still had a porch light on.

WHEN I WAS A KID, television was just getting popular and every year some kook in some faraway place would do something stupid like put razor blades in apples or poison in some home-made cookies. The media loved the stories because they created ratings and they scared the hell out of overprotective and overreacting mothers. Halloween morphed once more, this time for the worst.

WHEN I WAS A KID, the best holidays for kids (4th of July, Halloween, field day)were more fun than they are now. All of the mischief is out of Halloween and firecrackers are out of the 4th of July, and ribbons don't mean anything any longer. We might as well take the kid out of the kids.

WHEN I WAS A KID Halloween wasn't so sterile, but it is still one of my favorite holidays and just because the kids have to behave themselves is no reason for me to completely behave myself. See my previous article for some of the traditions that we have adopted.

If you would like to look up some

audio stories about Halloween or other topics click here.

Don’t be afraid to tell a few ghost stories.

Haunted house stories can be found here.

don't be AFRAID to BOO for us