Huge Bag o' Candy

The weather has suddenly turned much cooler here and Halloween is just around the corner. I don't know what made me think of it, maybe my 7-year-old son's excitement over his new Iron Man costume, but today I remembered a long-ago Halloween night.
I must have been about 8. It was rainy and miserable that night, but we soldiered through and went Trick-or-Treating through the neighborhood anyway. I had a huge bag of candy, weighted down by an extraordinary bounty of sugary glop. And I knew most of it was the good stuff too. As we trudged up the hill to our house it started to rain harder and by the time we got home we were all soaking wet. A rag-tag group of little monsters. As we fell to the living room floor to inspect our treasures, I realized that my goody bag had a big hole in the bottom of it. It had gotten wet and maybe I had dragged it on the street. Anyway, most of my candy was gone. Very little remained aside from the bogus stuff like that hard peanut-buttery goo in the nondescript orange and black wrappers; the stuff that we were convinced people put rat hair and razor blades in. The creepy candy. I was crushed. That was probably the same Halloween when I choked on a set of those cheap plastic vampire teeth. Remember those. They always made you gag.

There were better times ahead. Here's a picture from the family Halloween party, circa 1978, when my buddy Bert and I dressed up as "Dads" complete with Bermuda shorts and dark socks. That's my Mom, The Tree, beside me. And Uncle Jimmy was The Unknown Ventriloquist. Makes me laugh just to see it again. Good times. Really good.

There is something I've always loved about Halloween. Could be the season, could be the memories. I don't know, it's just a feeling I get. I can't wait to take the boy Trick-or-Treating. Sure hope it doesn't rain.