The best All Hallow's Eve ever

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission


Halloween 1972 began as one of the worst days of my young life. I was ten years old and curled up in my room, flooded in tears.

I had been looking forward to the holiday all month.

It was Halloween! Free candy! All you had to do was ask! Well, I always kind of figured that the costumes we wore were the price we paid to get sugar, but the costume was mother’s problem.

My mother, who later became a professional seamstress, created a cat costume for me. It was a jumper, and a little too small, and a little too tight. I hated it. Mostly because she said I looked “cute”; the death sentence for a ten year old boy. Still it was a minor price to pay for free chocolate.

My neighborhood stood on the verge of farm country, a little development oasis tucked into a valley. We all knew one another in that neighborhood; we were a small section of a small town

It never occurred to any of us to be cautious about the candy or knocking on a neighbor’s door. It was a year or two later I’d even heard about razor blades in candy apples. Even then we were warned at school to eat only the stuff that was wrapped (as if something couldn’t be re-wrapped, but what did we know?).

I had my little Trick-Or-Treat-For-Unicef box – the milk carton with the clever little slit in the side that I punched out myself. I had the brown paper grocery bag, the hated costume, black lines painted on my face to look like cat whiskers (kind of).

And I had brand new glasses that cost a fortune.

It wasn’t quite dark yet when I started out. It was just dusk and the twilight in Minnesota lasts forever.

I went to the first house, the one closest to mine, and made off with two candy bars and a Unicef dime. The next house was dark, all the kids knew they never gave out candy anyway, so we all left them alone.

The house across the street, however was an unknown. The couple who had just built that house were young and had no children. A couple of the neighbor kids I met while on my excursions told me the two newlyweds weren’t home, but I needed to check for myself. Never turn down the possibility of chocolate.

I ran across the narrow, empty street to the brand new house, and knocked. Nothing. They may not be home, after all. I reasoned that if they weren’t there then it didn’t matter if I rang the bell too. After all, candy was on the line here, I had to be sure.

I rang the bell again, then knocked once more. That last was more from frustration and faded hope. Nevertheless, there were allot of other unexploited houses out there, and I was going to get to every one of them.

I traipsed down the driveway of the deserted house and as I got about half way, I thought I’d heard something and turned around.

In retrospect, I should have also stopped walking.

I didn’t.

In my position, walking forward while looking backward, I never noticed when I drifted off the concrete and into the only rock in the entire yard.

I went down in the wet grass and mud, instantly ruining my cat costume. The bag holding two bars of chocolate flew off in one direction, the Unicef box in another, but to my absolute horror, my glasses took off in a direction all to themselves.

I’d had them for a week, maybe two and now they were simply gone. My mother and father both had made a point to impress upon me the value of those glasses and how I was to care for them, as they were the last I would get for a while. I didn’t dare walk around the yard to try and find them, for fear of stepping on them.

The only thing I could do was crawl. I spent over an hour crawling around in the wet grass and mud, drenching the costume and myself while growing more and more hysterical with each passing minute. I might have gone by them a dozen times blind and panicked in the darkness,.

Eventually, I had no choice. I had to make my way home as best I could. I had to tell my parents that I had lost my glasses.

I peeled off the cat suit in the garage. It was literally dropping thick gobbets of dirt and grass as I walked, and I was going to get into enough trouble because of my glasses, and ruining my mother’s careful work. I didn’t want to make things worse by destroying her floors.

I ran inside wearing only underwear and a t-shirt, crying my eyes out.

She cleaned me up, threw out the cat suit and had me go and put on jeans and tennis shoes. Grabbing a flashlight, she walked me outside to where I had fallen.

We spent another half hour searching the ground. She finally found them in a ditch at the edge of a culvert.

No wonder I couldn’t find them.

I was no longer in costume, but I still had my bag, and it was Halloween, after all. I’d only garnered the two bars and was determined to add more. Mom wasn’t too happy about me being out as late as it had become, so she went with me to “a few” houses so I could have my holiday.

I was too late. All the houses we went to had run out. The other kids in the neighborhood had all finished and gone home while I was searching for my glasses. Now, when I was able to start trick or treating, they were already deep into their anticipated sugar coma.

They had taken every last piece of candy in the neighborhood.

I was devastated. I went home with Mom, and said not a word the entire walk.

I had been robbed by the other kids, cheated by God, and betrayed by my own nearsightedness. My holiday, the one I had anticipated for so very long was over, and I had spent all of it crawling around in the dark.

I curled up on my bed, deep in the agony only a ten year old could feel.

Then Mother came in and told me that Dad had a service call.

My father owned a gas and service station. In those days service actually meant service. Every once in a while, he’d get called out in the middle of the night to jumpstart a car or make repairs on a car that couldn’t make it into his shop on it’s own.

I loved going on service calls with him. I was like a puppy who heard the word “Ride” and jumped in the truck. Service calls were cool, even if waiting for him to do the actual work was a little dull. It was the time with him that I liked.

Mother said that he had a service call and wanted me to go along. I was too miserable, in too much pain at the injustice of the world, and angry at God and glasses. I just couldn’t do it.

She kept after me, trying to get me out of the house, to at least try and cheer up.

I finally relented.

A sullen, quite, little boy in the passenger side of my father’s truck, I presented the world at large with the greatest and most sincere pout any child ever did. I positively glared out the window, defying any house or street to dare and show something cheery or festive.

Dad pulled up in front of a house less than two miles away.

There was no car on the street.

“Why don’t you go up and see if they have any candy?” my father said.

“No.” I couldn’t bear to have my holiday shattered further. “They’re out, everybody is”.

“Just try it.” He insisted.

“But I ruined my costume.”

“Try it anyway.”

I found out later that during the half hour or so that I was curled up in my room feeling the great weight of disappointment and grievance, my father was on the phone calling all of his regular customers to see who had candy left over.

We spent the night (a school night, no less) driving around the little town where we lived, visiting each house in turn.

We didn’t get home until late, very late. Dad had to get up at 4 the next morning and put in a 14 hour day, but stuck it out so his son could have the holiday he almost missed.

I got less than a quarter of the candy I’d normally get in any given year, but that Halloween is the only one I remember. I remember too how wonderful each and every one of those candies tasted; better than any I’d ever had before or since.

The part I remember the best is sharing with dad on the way home.

I gave him some of the little candy I had.

He gave me some of the little time he had.