11.01.05

Halloween Memories

Tagged as Humor

Halloween is over. When I was a kid, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. Now that I live in a building with a security door, sometimes I barely notice it. But reading this Fark thread reminded me of a few of my favorite Halloween stories, and since it’s been a while since I’ve shared these stories online (and also a while since I’ve posted anything on this blog), I thought I’d take a few minutes to type up some of my favorite Halloween memories.

Several years ago, when I was in high school, my dad and I decided we were tired of giving out candy to the same kids I went to school with. So in addition to the usual assortment of candies that year, we bought a couple armloads of Libby’s Potted Meat Food Product. If you’ve never seen it (check the canned meat section of your local supermarket, near the SPAM), it looks kind of like spreadable vienna sausage paste. There are several brands available, but Libby’s won us over with its combination of low price (fifty-nine cents a can, if I recall correctly) and disgusting ingredients (my favorite: “cooked partially defatted pork fatty tissue”). We kind of buried it under the real candy and palmed it as we dropped it into the high school kids’ bags—still, one can of it was sitting on the doorstep the next day, and frankly it’s a miracle that no cans came flying through the window that night.

The year after that my cousin and I took over the Halloween duties, and after much thought we decided on a Christmas theme. We bought Santa hats, played a “Reggae Christmas” CD I found somewhere, and handed out candy canes. Most kids thought it was pretty funny. One little girl, probably about three years old, was petrified when we threw open the door and yelled “Merry Christmas!” We then balanced a two-pound fruitcake on her plastic pumpkin. She remained rooted to the spot until her father picked her up and carried her away. We also gave some kid a one-pound marzipan pig mounted on its own cutting board, and another got a framed certificate for Excellence in Costume Design.

The next year we toned it down a little bit. Fewer and fewer kids were trick-or-treating, and we knew we wouldn’t be able to unload as much stuff. Toward the end of the night we actually went for a walk, found a group of kids, and promised we’d give them everything we had left. They followed us home, where in addition to dumping about a pound of candy into each of their bags we gave one a whole smoked trout. They went quiet for a moment, and then one said, “Oh, this is where Laura got that award last year.” That warmed our hearts.

But the next year was our last. I think we got fewer than twenty trick-or-treaters all night, most of them high schoolers in street clothes with a mask or a little fake blood. We gave sardines and bouillon cubes to those slackers, but our hearts weren’t in it anymore.

I realize I’m a little young for nostalgia, but Halloween just isn’t what it used to be, and I for one blame the parents. When I was a kid, no one thought twice about sending three or four kids out alone, after dark, to beg for candy from complete strangers. These days that doesn’t happen much anymore, and yet the crime rate is actually lower than it was back then. I think parents have been watching too many TV cop dramas. And now what am I supposed to do with all this potted meat?

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