11/1/2026
Well, we didn’t get any trick-or-treaters stopping by last night for Halloween. With Halloween being on a Saturday this year, I figured we might get a few. I even made an effort to sweep off my porch and put a new light bulb in the set of lights that glow out over my driveway, but I guess my efforts were all in vain! The only spooks I got for the evening came from watching my beloved Oklahoma State Cowboys fall to the Iowa State Cyclones, even though my team was a ten-point favor. Scary indeed!
Margaret had bought a bunch of candy for any of those who cared to come by, but I guess I’ll just have to eat it all now. Oh, the tragedy of the post Halloween blues! Like many people, we tend to buy Halloween candy in two waves. The first wave comes when Margaret buys a bunch of the goodies for Halloween as soon as those bags of mini candy bars hit the supermarket shelves during the first week of October. The second wave comes a day or two before Halloween because by this time we’ve already eaten all the miniature Baby Ruth, Butterfingers, and KitKat bars from the first wave. Indeed, having a bowl full of those scrumptious goodies setting around for an entire month is just a little too much temptation even for the hardiest of souls. The second wave of candy generally consists of a bunch of sour stuff that kids tend to like, but I’ve never quite got into. I’m not sure I could even handle a bag of Sweet Tarts anymore. Since we didn’t get any trick-or-treaters, we now have a bowl full of enough sour stuff to keep my face puckered up for the entire month of November. Well, of course I’ll have to eat it. It’s my duty! I’ll just have to pucker up and bear it!
As a kid I lived a few miles out in the country, and we never got any trick-or-treaters stopping by our house. However, the first house I ever owned was right in the middle of a regular trick-or-treating Mecca! My starter home was in a neighborhood called Constitutional Village, which carried such a name because all the streets were named after states, and during my four years in my little house on Colorado Street I was swarmed by a small army of little spooks on Halloween! Indeed, this was a perfect neighborhood for trick-or-treating. There were a lot of houses and plenty of streetlights lighting up the sidewalks that ran through everyone’s front yard. I’d simply turn on my front porchlight, open my front door, and sit at my computer in front of my screen door while hordes of little tykes swarmed down upon my house decked out in the season’s fashion of serial killers, super heroes, and fairytale princesses. I actually had over a hundred kiddos stop by one Halloween, and without trying to sound too creepy, I actually found the experience to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I was working a compressed nightshift back in those days, which meant that during the five years I lived there I was only home during two or three of the Halloweens.
Although I now live in the country, I’m still in a housing addition that probably holds over 50 houses. However, in this rural, suburban area there aren’t any streetlights or sidewalks, and everyone has a pretty sizeable front lawn to wander through. A few years ago we got quite a few trick-or-treaters stopping by our house. At least they seemed to be coming by on the Halloweens I was at home. Once again, if Halloween fell on the days of Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday Margaret and I were both at work, and my teenage step kids refused to be bothered by the tiresome activity of answering the door and handing out candy. However, if Halloween fell on one of my off days we were open for business! At least I was anyway. Margaret carried the belief that buying the candy was her job while the duty of answering the door and dishing out the goods fell upon me. In fact, if she heard the doorbell ring and I happened to be in another room she would simply scream out, “The doorbell!” Where I found intermingling with all the little kiddos in their costumes to be kind of cool, Margaret found contact with other human beings, regardless of their ages, to be quite terrifying. Who knows, maybe she was scared of their costumes.
Speaking of being scared, we had to tame down our decorations one year. We used to have this life-sized Frankenstein that we’d hang on the brick wall outside our front door. In all reality, it looked like something straight out of a cartoon, but it would actually speak when it had new batteries. However, I guess it looked a bit too real because a couple of the smaller kiddos wouldn’t come near my front door with that horrific, plastic Frankie standing guard. Even one of the grandkids in her early years freaked out when she first saw it. I remember when she walked over to the fake Frankenstein and tapped the plastic head just to make sure it was indeed fake. Well, of course it’s fake. Where the heck would I get a real Frankenstein? Even with my 16 college hours of applied science, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have thrown together a real one. Then again, my brother might have been able to pull off such a feat. He was an engineer. With the help of my chemist father-in-law, there’s no telling what those two might have been able to put together. I was a Radio, TV, & Film major. I was only good for writing a screenplay about a monster.
Probably my favorite trick or treater that popped by our house was this little girl who came wandering up to my front door before the sun even went down. At first, I didn’t recognize her costume and simply asked who she was. “I’m Dorthy,” she stated so matter-of-factly. Okay, I was a little slow to pick up the Wizard of Oz vibe. Looking back, I should have ask her where the tinman, scarecrow, and lion were. Oh well, I was probably the first house she had hit for the day. Over the course of the evening the little girl probably heard that question so many times she was ready to click her heels together and go home.
During those years when we got trick-or-treaters, I noticed the later the evening got the older the kids got. By the time the eight o’clock hour had rolled around some of the trick-or-treaters were taller than me. Of course, a lot of the teens were simply accompanying their little brothers and sisters, which I always thought was kind of sweet. My brother would have never done that! A lot of people tend to have issues with handing out candy to teenagers, but I’ve never had a problem with it. However there should be a rule. If you’re a six-foot-tall teenager and want to cash in on the free goodies, at least put out the effort to put on a costume. I had some kids showing up dressed like cocky teenagers. Yes, that tends to be a popular and low maintenance costume for some. Of course, I guess I should be careful what I wish for. One year a group of teenagers stopped by my house who were indeed decked out in costume. Some more memorable than others. Some teenage girl, who was probably around sixteen, was dressed as a firefighter. At least that’s what her helmet implied. However, the dress she wore look more like something a pole dancer would be wearing. Let’s just say her dress had a plunging neckline that settled somewhere around her navel while her skirt was raised high enough to be considered a belt. The fact that I still remember so many details about that is a bit scary in itself.
I don’t know why kids have stopped trick-or-treating in my neighborhood. Who knows, maybe I’m the only one who had their porch light on. Maybe everyone else was watching college football. Regardless of the reason, I’m now stuck with five pounds of candy to eat.
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