OK, folks, it’s getting time for the local paper to run their annual “Halloween Is an Evil and Un-Christian Holiday” letter to the editor, and this morning’s paper has a front page article about churches “reclaiming” Halloween. Needless to say, I don’t share those beliefs.
Since this place is dedicated to fighting ignorance, let’s do it our way. Tell me your favo(u)rite Halloween memories, as a kid or as an adult. Costumes, candy, strange stuff, I’m interested in the whole nine yards.
Also, happy Samhain to all our resident Wiccans.
CJ
From my high school days, one Halloween is memorable for the strip of flaming diesel fuel that ran down the length of Main Street in my small Kansas hometown. Nothing beats that memory! But the outhouse on top of the high school was pretty good, too. Oh, and the time the basketball coach’s VW was set on cinderblocks so the wheels were just barely off the ground… he couldn’t figure out why the dang thing wasn’t goin’ anywhere! And the potato on the tailpipe of the police car - right in the police station parking lot! I, of course, was a spectator in all of these shenanigans.
When I was a little kid, there was only one thing that mattered on Halloween. Who was giving out popcorn balls? We were like little junkies, roaming the streets hitting up other street urchins for info. “Hey kid, you got any popcorn balls”? “Yeah… down one block, big white house with a blue light bulb. Ring the doorbell twice. Stay away from Clay street, they all give out fruit”. We could get candy anytime. But popcorn balls only appeared one night of the year. The holy grail was a popcorn ball with peanuts. The measure of a good trick or treater the next day was how many balls you scored.
She did this to two separate groups of kids, a kitten per bag. She asked if they wanted them, and told them they could bring them back if their parents did not want a kitten.
Everyone in town knew everyone else (very small town; Virden, Illinois) and no one brought kittens back. My father was the band teacher for all the grades, and my mom was also well known. I think she gave out four kittens. They were old enough to leave their mother.
This was back when cats were outside pets and very few people spayed or neutered animals.
When I was 15 or 16, my friends talked me into wearing this bikini apron I have (it’s an apron with fake boobs and the figure of a woman on it). Well, one of my friends was dressed as an old man with this silly mask on. She was my “pimp.” We got many interesting reactions. At one house, a lady asked, “So, how’s business?” My friends pushed me up front and said, “Ask her!” At another house we were walking away, and my “pimp” friend was yelling to a guy on the lawn, “fifty bucks!” He started saying something back and my friend said, “Go to him, he’ll give you fifty bucks!” Of course, we ran into a popular girl from school giving out candy, who gave me a funny look. I wonder if that started any rumors, considering I’m the quiet, prudish type. That was an interesting Halloween to remember…
When I was young, the night before Hallowe’en was “doorbell night”.
Yep. We rang doorbells and ran away.
Of course, we did it only in our own neighborhood, and all the grown-ups knew what was going on. But it was really fun.
Oh, forgot to mention: My dad told me that in HIS day, they had several nights before Hallowe’en that were trickster nights. One night was “switching trashcans”. Another was a day-thing: “switching laundry on clotheslines”.
LOL
I remember one hallowe’en when I was like 15 and my sister was 12 or 13.I was forced to take her and her best friend Katie trick-or-treating while my parents took my brother and his friends.We were out for like six hours(from around 6 pm until after midnight!),gathering massive amounts of candy and pulling all kinds of stunts such as stealing giant plastic insects,etc from displays,kicking in pumpkins and stealing all the candy from some bozos who’d put out a WHOLE DISH with a note:“Please Take One.Thanks”.This was the year my sister and her friend went as witches and I went as a car-accident fatality.
It was a blast.
IDBB(the baddest ass trick-or-treater on the block)
There was a house on our street back when I was a kid that gave out full size candy bars. And not just one per kid, either, they’d hold out a tray full and say “Take as many as you want.” Plus the day after, they’d give my mom all the leftovers.
I think everyone’s favorite house was the one in a nearby subdivision where the guy worked for a comic book distributor and he put out boxes of comics on the porch for the kids to look through and take.
It was my best friends birthday, so we had the party early.
Then we cut out black cats, witches, and pumpkins, taped them in my room, pulled the blinds down and pretended to be witches.
It was a fun childhood memory.
Well one of my good friends always had a choice… he could go trick-or-treating or have a b-day party not both (He’s a halloween baby)
I remember as a little kid putting on this cloak I had which was printed with bats and a little hood with ears on it and have shoepolish on my face. Mom would then take me trick or treating in our neighborhood then we’d drive to Grandma’s and trick or treat there… that was years ago… and shoe polish is soooo hard to get off your face!
Last year was fun too. I had a halloween party with the Guides and I think I creeped out a couple of the brownies and sparks with my fangs… heh… not on purpose but it was fun. Then I went trick or treating but I can’t do that anymore. I’m almost 20 and last year was definately pushing it.
When I was about 12, a friend and me stashed a dozen eggs a month before Halloween so they could “ripen”. On Halloween night, we had covered many miles gathering loot and just before quitting for the night, we remembered the eggs. Something had gotten to the eggs (probably a raccoon) and only 3 were left. We took the eggs and went looking for something (or someone) to eggs. Because of the late hour, there were very few people out, mostly kids older than us. We found our chance at a house having a party and many of the revelers had spilled out into the front yard. From behind some bushes a couple houses away, we each launched an egg towards the partiers. My egg hit a car in the driveway and my friend’s hit the house. A couple of guys ran out to the street to see where the eggs came from and I threw the last egg in their direction. I jumped on my bike and did not see where the last egg went. My friend turned and looked and said I hit the short guy with the egg. We both flew home just in case the police were called.
The next day at school during third period math, the assistant principal came into our classroom. He had a huge knot under his left eye. When asked what happened, he said he was hit by a rotten egg the previous night, besides the black eye he also said the costume he had rented was ruined and that was going to cost him $100. When he left the room I could not hold in the laughter anymore. Luckily for me, many others found his situation equally funny and most in the class had a good laugh. I did not know the AP lived only a few blocks from me. I also avoided the street he lived on for a long time too.
When I was a kid we could trick-or-treat safely without our parents. My mom said not to go beyond certains streets in our neighborhood. So by the time I was in third grade I made a map of the neighborhood and traced my route, so I could hit all the houses within my mom’s “zone” with as little backtracking as possible. I got more candy than my two sisters put together, and when home I sorted it. Lesser stuff, like rootbeer barrels, were in one pile and eaten first. Then came gum and lollipops. Last to be consumed would be the chocolate.
I remember the year I was in fourth grade I made an angel costume. It was freezing out that year but I stuck it out and even went home once to warm up, so that I could grimly complete my route. Once at one house there was another girl in an angel costume, who looked at my homemade item(hers looked boughten) and said snootily “She’s an angel?” Didn’t make me feel bad though, I knew I could make something on my own.
by the time I was too old to trick-or-treat I missed the costuming more than the candy. That’s why I still like sci-fi conventions, you can dress up and nobody thinks you’re wierd.
Back when I was in 4th grade my best friend Timmy and I decided to get the most candy ever, which meant that we would have to sprint from house to house and cut through backyards etc.
He went as a cowboy and I went as a Cylon, which was a problem because the mask kept fogging up and prevented me from seeing where I was going when I ran.
Anyway, we were getting a mad haul when we cut through some bushes and my costume got caught on a branch. I kept going, only 1/2 hearing the ripping sound. We got to the next house, rang the bell and when the guy opened the door, he looked at me and said, “What the hell are you supposed to be?”
My mask was on top of my head and I only had 1/5 of a costume left.:eek: :eek:
We still ran around for another 2 hours and I remember that the candy lasted until Easter.
My Hallowe’een memories usually involve frantically finishing three or four people’s costumes a few minutes before we leave for the club, or to trick-or-treat, or something.
In my last year of high school, I wore a parti-coloured cotehardie in black and purple-and-green shot silk, and went as Eleanor of Aquitane, to see if anyone noticed the time discrepancy between my costume and who I was supposed to be. No one did. I’m such a geek.
The first Halloween I can remember was in 1973. I was four and wanted to be a princess, real, real bad. I just had to have one of those pointy hats with a scarf hanging from the point. My mom waited until 5:00 PM on Halloween to make the hat. This was a more difficult task than anticipated. Four tries and an hour later, I had my hat and dress; I was majestic, if I do say so myself. We lived in Munich, Germany, at the time, in U.S. Army housing. Germans don’t celebrate Halloween, so trick-or-treating happened only in our neighborhood. Housing consisted of apartment buildings with two stairwells, six apartments to a stairwell. A basement, running the full length of the building, housed storage units and laundry rooms. Those basements made great haunted houses. Herd the kids in on one end and send 'em out the other. The specifics of my own terrifying haunted house experience are not stored in my brain. All I know is that from that point until the age of 13 I would not enter a basement alone. And I still do the run in and run out thing if I’m alone…
My other memory is of my eighth birthday party (1976), which concided with Halloween. All the guests wore costumes. I don’t remember what I was but I remember my Barbie doll cake - a Barbie doll with a big hoop dress (the cake). The skirt’s icing extended up to make a strapless bodice. We also had those cool Baskin Robbins ice cream cone witches. Remember those? The cone was a witch’s hat and the ice cream scoop was the face. The last event of the night was trick-or-treating.
My parents did a fun thing in the week leading up to Halloween, but they only did it for a couple of years - probably because of more kids in the family and less money.
They would give me an apple to put in a bowl on the kitchen counter. The next morning it was a small pumpkin! The day after that, a larger one! And so on, until the day before Halloween when it was too big to fit in the bowl and was suitable to carve, which we did.