Back in the day, Halloween was sheer delight. No one worried about razors in apples, or the safety of the streets. Parents stayed at home and gave out candy. Kids went door to door showing off their costumes. (most homemade using a bit of ingenuity.)

Every year, after the trick or treating was over for the younger set, my mother circled around to the back of our house and returned through our front door dressed as a ghost, screeching and making sounds that I guess she figured a ghost might make. My father and I  always made quite a fuss until the ghost disappeared out through the back of the house again. A few minutes later, my mother would reappear, usually coming up from the basement steps. (Sheet stowed away for another year.)

We didn’t receive mini bars of candy, either. Full-size candy bars were the order of the day.

And nobody frowned about teenagers coming around for treats later in the evening. If people ran out of candy, they dropped nickels in the bags. Neighborhood stores stayed open and gave out great treats, and when I became one of those teenagers, my friends and I always stopped in at the local bar. We thought of it as “hitting up the drunks” (My mother would’ve passed out if she knew.) But the drunks handed out some A-#1 largesse. They’d take change off the bar, usually a lot more than a nickel, and drop it into our bags. They actually liked being included in the fun and asked about our costumes and laughed and joked with us.

Those were the days.