Tuesday, October 28, 2008

TRICK OR TREAT


Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays when I was a kid. I think one reason was because we never really got a lot of treats or candy as kids, except at holidays. Halloween was my chance to get a whole lot of candy just for me. We didn't have fancy Halloween treat buckets or decorated sacks or anything. We didn't even have plastic sacks back then, so usually we would get a used grocery paper bag and color it with crayons or markers by drawing Halloween pictures on it. After doing this for several years, and carrying that paper bag around for a couple of hours (yes, a couple of hours - we were serious trick-or-treaters), the bag would get all ratty or it would tear. It was also not very comfortable to carry, especially after you got a pound or two of candy in it. So I had the great idea of using an old pillow case. It worked great, and so I continued using that from then on.

I can't really remember what my costumes were. I do remember one Halloween I dressed up all in black - black pants, black turtleneck - can't remember what else. I can't even remember what I was supposed to be. That may have been the year I started using the pillowcase. I may have been a burglar. Ooh. Aah. We never went to any Halloween carnivals or Trunk or Treats or Halloween parties. All we did was trick-or-treat. We started on our street and kept going street after street after street after street.

One street over from our street, lived Mr. Applegate. Yes, that was his real name. Mr. Applegate was another person who also loved Halloween. He used to decorate his house really scary. He even had scary music playing. When he opened the door, he was dressed in costume. I don't remember if he dressed up in the same thing every year or different things. I don't even remember how he dressed up. All I remember is that we all thought it was the scariest house in the neighborhood. It was so scary we didn't go by there during the rest of the year. Maybe we wondered what kind of weirdo got that much of a kick scaring the crap out of little kids at Halloween year after year. Lots of kids wouldn't even go up to his house to get candy. They were so scared they just skipped it. I remember skipping his house lots of times, and then finally came the year that I felt brave enough to trick or treat at Mr. Applegate's house. I'm sure I had my friends with me because I would never have dared go by myself. I remember we went up to the door and we were scared to death. He answered the door...the scary music was playing...he was in his scary costume (whatever it was - I was too scared to look at it)...then he INVITED US IN!!! OH NO!! WE FORGOT THAT HE ALWAYS INVITED THE KIDS TO COME IN! We went in and there was Mrs. Applegate. She didn't have a costume on . She was just a normal, nice, non-scary lady who had a HUGE bowl of candy. She held out the bowl and told us to take some. We each took a piece. She said, no - we were all supposed to take at least a handful of candy. A HANDFUL of candy?!! Well heck! This was worth any fear we had had to bear so far! We thrust our hands into that bowl and grabbed as much as we could hold, dropped it in our sacks, said "Thank you" and left. That was it. See, we told each other, Mr. Applegate's house really wasn't that scary. But as we left we could hear the next trick-or-treaters coming up the walk. One little girl was crying that she didn't want to go to Mr. Applegate's house - it was too scary!

3 comments:

Bullet for Babs said...

For whatever reason, I've just never been that in to Halloween...I never really dressed up except as a kid...I have however, always enjoyed how much other people enjoyed it...I like seeing people so excited about it...

Delirious said...

I know you like Apples to Apples. I belong to a blog that plays this game online. We are currently looking for more players. If you would like to join, you can check out this link: http://rahabskitchen.blogspot.com/ to get details in how to join the blog.

I had totally forgotten about Mr. Applegate. I can't remember exactly where he lived, but I remember his name. I also have alot of memories of you taking me trick or treating. You often would come up with a costume for me too. :)

Delirious said...

Oh, and here is the link to the actual game. http://applestwoapples.blogspot.com/