Halloween memories...........

halloween is my favorite holiday. i know, people like me are usually on the outer fringes of normal society, but its true so why try to hide it. as a child this holiday was a series of highs and lows. from the easy going fun of charlie brown and the great pumpkin to the fact that there might actually be ghosts and one might be under my bed or waiting for me on halloween night. it was always darker on halloween night when we were going door to door. there was always the talk of what we were going to dress up as and then when you saw everyones costumes it was great. we went to trick otr treating as a pack (without parents) and we were out for hours. i mean like five hours. we started at say 6 oclock and didnt end until after 11. if you had a light on we showed up. there were no amount of steps or a mountain too high for us to climb. we mapped out our route so that we could hit the maximum amount of homes in the allotted time and having our homes as the hub so that we could dump our pillow cases as they got full. there were years when we would get 6 or 8 pillow cases full of candy in a night. we cut through allies and yards that wouldnt have bothered us any other night of the year but that night it was darker and the shadows looked scarier. as we got older the fun turned to pranks. seeing that the area that i grew up in in pittsburgh was more akin to mayberry we didnt light cars on fire or any of the shit you heard about in detroit. we were more of the toilet paper and egg throwing crowd. the mini-mart near where we lived wouldnt sell eggs to minors the week before halloween without a note from your parents which became a lucrative business for the one guys sister who could write well and had adult looking handwriting. that led to the letter...

dear stop n go employee,

please allow (whoever) to purchase these eggs with the money i have given him. i need these to make some halloween treats for him and his friends.


thank you,
(mr/mrs so and so)

i think you get the picture. whatever they thought my mother was making with 12 dozen eggs i'll never know but it worked. the police kept an eye on us too but considering that they had all the ability of barney fife well we didnt worry a whole lot about them. stealing pumpkins was another thing all together. my buddies and i held the "7 man one week pumpkin stealing record". let me preface this part with the facts that pumpkins cost less then and people didnt do the intricate designs they do now. i have scared all the kids in my neighborhood so bad that they wont even think of stealing my pumpkins now. i think we stole something like 180 pumpkins that week.

as i get ready to take my two children (and six of their friends) out for trick or treating i realize it isnt the same. all the kids have parents with them, its now ends at 7:30, alot of kids dont even dress. i refuse to give candy to older kids who wont dress up. fuck them. no effort no candy. my street has one side where all they houses are on the level and the other side (the high side) where there are steps. we have eight steps and some kids wont come up them because ....well....they are lazy little fucks. its a shame these kids cant expirence the fun and the scared feelings and the freedom we felt on that one night.

well i've rambled on now too long. i sound like grampa on the simpsons. enjoy your day everyone.