Trick or Treating

We are a family who loves Halloween! For as long as I can remember, mom has always decorated the house to the "nth" degree. Everyone's favorite decoration, to this day, is the hanging witch and ghosts. Weeks of planning went into our costumes. I think I can remember most of the things I dressed up as growing up but one, in particular, that I can remember is the year mom made everyone (but her) clown costumes and dad used a little pink balloon for his nose.

Now, as I take kids to their own version of trick-or-treating (now trunk-or-treating), I feel a slight sadness that they will never know trick-or-treating as we did growing up. We always started down the road to get our dollar at Fielding's, Rosie's was often on the stop as well as Gene Gardner's, I think for mom and dad's nostalgia of the Boston Baked Beans (a tiny little Ann seeing them and exclaiming, "They got BEANS!"). The stops varied some after that but always took us to Aunt RaNae's when we were younger, then on to Grandpa and Grandma Lindsay's, and finally ending and Grandpa and Grandma Moser's. This was, by far, the most anticipated stop of the night, since once we got there, we were off to pillage the neighborhood of their candy! Often times we'd end up going around twice, once just us and once with the Jensen's; we always made a haul in the candy department! One year, I can remember wearing dad's old clown costume and trudging through snow to trick-or-treat... mostly because there was a drift on the side of Grandpa's driveway that I took a digger on...no candy was lost, though, just my red clown nose.

Once the rounds were complete we'd end up back at Grandma's and Grandpa's where we would examine our loot, compare with the others, and inevitably, try and trade for the good stuff! Typically, all that candy would outlast itself as we'd end up stashing it in our room and forgetting about it, then eventually it would find it's way to the trash, but I think I'd take the memories over the candy any day, and that's coming from ANN DEE THE CANDY MACHINE!