Well another halloween has zipped past. All religious or anti-religious connotations aside, the whole thing has gotten pretty goofy if you ask me. When I was a kid, this was much more of a kiddie thing, my mother dressed us up in some dopey costumes from some equally dopey department store, or defaulted to the old standby; the sheet-with-two-eyeholes-ghost getup, and then just turned us loose in the neighborhood to collect candy. Then we would walk as far as we could stand to other neighborhoods to get more. Then my parents would drive us to the other end of Lowell where our cousins lived, and we'd make the rounds there. I remember one lady on the next street whose name I've long since lost, always invited the kids into her front room and had this giant tray from which you could grab your choice of coconut dipped candy apples on a stick, or one of those candied popcorn balls. Judging by the number of those candy apple sticks you could find around the streets of the neighborhood for weeks after, she must have made hundreds of them. Nowadays that would likely get her either fined as an environmental criminal, or put on a predator watch list with the state police.
I seem to recall getting home really late, but it was probably only like 9:30 or something. But it was really innocent fun and you came home with a pillowcase more than half filled with candy. Enough candy to make you sick for weeks after. If you were really cool, you had one of those plastic pumpkin buckets to collect with, though you usually had to do periodic drops at home so as to avoid candy overflow.
It seems to be much less of a kiddie thing now, with only a few town prescribed trick-or-treating hours, $75 blow-up yard ornaments and transient halloween stores that largely cater to adults that want to dress up like hookers and pimps or maybe the Joker. And then go to work for the day dressed as such. Well, at least the ones that typically don't dress that way the rest of the year. But I'm pretty sure I saw more adults in dopey costumes than kids by at least two to one.
But do not let it be said that I am some sort of cranky old party-pooper. Not me! I got dressed up for halloween this year for the first time in many years. Being sick of the tired out old monster/ghoul/ghost/skeleton stuff, I thought I would go for an animal/nature theme and hit the streets in my sweet mink costume.