HALLOWEEN

Halloween is two days away, and I miss being of an age to trick-or-treat. It's not the candy-I can get that anytime- but the sheer adventure of the evening.

I imagine most places, kids don't go door to door at night anymore, just because of the way things are. we'd go, generally a couple days before the holiday itself, starting out just past sunset, which was a big part of the thrill....usually, we had to be at least in the yard at sunset.

Mainly, we worked our own neighborhood, although some years, Ma piled us into the station wagon and took us different places. I remember one year being taken to the house of the man who'd be my 7th grade Science teacher, as he'd been my mother's. We'd have big paper grocery bags, which of course got harder and harder to carry as the night wore on....eventually, we'd wend our way home.

Once there, everything was dumped out on the dining room table, and sorted. Apples, loosely-wrapped candy and such was always discarded. Store-wrapped sweets, money, and the odd toy, we got to keep. There was always so much stuff that no one complained about the discarding of some of it.

Here in Whitney, small town that it is, kids might still go out at night.....to be honest, I really didn't notice last year.

That'd be nice.