BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The harbinger of nostalgic days gone by, it is a time of crispness in the air. Things turn to black and Orange, and suddenly sweet. Checking my wardrobe, I now realize I have complete costumes to trick or treat in! Yes, I can go as a real bum, I even have a beard.

When I was a kid, (I once was), We went out on that special day, without costumes, unless you were a sissy. Sissies always had costumes. We guys in the hood got a brown paper bag, some colorful chalk and an attitude and rang all the doorbells in each of the apartment houses. When we got nothing, we wedged the doorbell to ring constantly and ran. Sometimes we chalked the place up, nothing artistic, just angry strokes that said: “These people refused us candy”. The chalk washed away very easily.

Of course, encroachment was not tolerated by foreigners from another neighborhood. Socks were loaded with the colorful chalk, and if someone was in our territory, we bombarded them with sock attacks. We would either fling them or pound them on their backs with the socks, leaving their cloths chalked. It hurt too!


It’s Halloween.When I got older and moved to Long Island, that all ended, and I did another kind of trick or treating. My sisters would come home with their candy, which Mom put them in a bowl each, and gave them instructions not to eat it all at once. I immediately helped them ‘sort’ it. There were three piles, two visible and one miserable. The two visible were for each of the girls, while the miserable was mine. (Hee hee hee).

It never occurred to them that they brought home chocolate candy bars, those little miniature Mounds and Almond Joys, and never tasted them. I bet to this day they wonder where they went! I know: they went into the miserable pile. That pile was built up while transferring the candy. I would slip them in my sleeve, and my hands were empty. I learned that from a pickpocket friend of mine, and he knows who he is.

An unfortunate lady lived in the hood, in that she was no beauty queen. She was dubbed, “Halloween”!

Please remember my pals Joan and Anita.

Thanks and “Trick or Treat!”