Halloween Through The Years: Kid, Parent, Grandparent
Good News Daily Halloween stories prompt
I grew up in a time and place where it was safe to send children out on their own in the neighborhood. So at Halloween, us kids went trick-or-treating, and our parents stayed home and handed out candy. Except for the grumpy neighbors who left for the night or kept their lights turned off. Or the weird ones who gave out pennies or apples.
We often made our own costumes because money was tight. But it wasn’t about the costumes for me. It was about the candy! It was a seek and conquer campaign to get as much candy as possible. Some kids used those cute little plastic pumpkin candy baskets. Ha! Not this kid. Me and my cohorts used empty pillowcases — no need to run home and dump the bucket. A pillowcase could hold pounds of candy and would last the whole night.
Since we lived in a blue-collar neighborhood, the houses were close together. You could hit all 40 houses on a street in a short amount of time. Especially if you ran from house to house. We did. Then it was on to the next street. Then the next street. And so on.
When we finally hit all the streets or were too exhausted to continue, or people started telling us it was too late, we would go home and dump out our pillowcase. Then we would sort through the…
