One minute ago, NYC Frazier repeat, Halloween trick-or-treater, explaining the expression (non facetiously[?]): “If you don’t have a treat for me, you’ll get a trick [ie, eggs, tp’ing].”
I always thought it meant the kid was asking which he’d get. Every year I threaten my wife that this time I’m going to open the door with a butcher’s knife held high screaming like a banshee for a change, but she always ends up giving them chocolate.
In fact, I remember the small but distinct possibility of something like that as part of the little frisson of fear when trick-or-treating, besides that provided by the night and some of the kids’ costumes, which were scary-but-I’m-too-big-to-admit-it.
This is a need answer fast because the holiday is coming.
It’s the kids who do the tricks if they don’t get a treat. If you didn’t give a treat your house would be egged, or TPed, or the sidewalk marked up with chalk in a sock. (The last was current in my neighborhood in the Bronx in the 1950s.)
If you tried to scare the kids, you’d find your trashcans turned over.
When I was a kid this was serious business. We spent the first part of the night collecting candy, and the late to wee hours teaching misers a lesson. Generally said lessons involved the less inspired jack-o-lanterns from the neighboring houses.
In my area these days you get a pass as long as you don’t make every body walk down and knock on your door to find out you are a miser. Just leave the porch light off and they’ll pretend they don’t notice you.
Last year I forgot to turn the porch light off while I took Celtling out trick-or-treating. The next morning my mailbox was stuffed chock full of empty candy wrappers. It was really quite impressive; they must have been saving candy wrappers since the Halloween before. Worse than staticy packing peanuts, they were all sticky and sugary and yet still light enough to and fly about when they weren’t clinging to your clothes from the static electricity.
My father told stories of the trick-or-treat pranks they did in his day.
Outhouses in those days simply sat above a big hole in the ground. Move the outhouse back so the hole in the ground is just outside, in front of the door. Figure out some way to cover up the hole then sprinkle leaves and what-not over that to camouflage it.
Dad - Who pushed over the outhouse?
Son - Like Geo. Washington I cannot tell a lie. I did it.
Son receives tanning.
Son - Why was I punished? Washington didn’t when he confessed chopping down the tree.
Dad - George’s father wasn’t in the tree.
Seriously, I thought it was common knowledge that there’s an implied threat (or at least as much of a threat as a six year old dressed up like Batman can produce) that you give a treat or you get a trick.
Saw a Hitler Channel show a couple of years ago that discussed how bad the underage hooligan’s mischief sometimes got. 1920s and 30s seemed pretty rough, even dangerous at times.
In my father’s tales, they didn’t camouflage. They just let the darkness do its thing.
My mother told stories of making rattlers out of wooden spools (I can’t remember the last time I saw thread with a wooden spool). You cut notches into the flanges, put the spool on a pencil, wound string around it, held it against an outside house wall, and pulled the string. It was supposed to make a spooky rattle that sounded like it was coming from in the walls, scaring anyone who was worried about ghosts on Halloween night.
Hah! Rattlesnake eggs. Thread a rubberband through a button. suspend on an opened paperclip, wind up the button and put in an envelope. The person opening the envelope gets a surprise! Good for April Fool’s Day, too.
Now I’m remembering a cartoon I saw in an October issue of Playboy … a couple decades ago. It showed a guy opening his front door to find an attractive woman standing there, wearing a witch’s hat and little else. The guy is saying,
“Why, Ms. Smith, I do believe that I’ll settle for a trick!”