Halloween Candy

We did not get any. We ended up going to a WICAN party, one of our shop patrons, I repair her jewelery, and make stuff no one else will.
No strange stuff, no candy, just homemade food, lots of coffee, and the partiers loaded me up with jewelery to fix.
Gads.
What happened to tying Louie the Burglar to a gravestone, scaring the daylights out of him, putting lit bags of dog poo on doorsteps and ringing the door bell?
What has happened to trick or treat?

How things have changed, indeed. It seems small, but I have been noticing the changes occuring across the board. The edges have been rounded, there is no room to grow up.
I teach a very intricate form of jewelery. I have yet to find anyone who is willing to learn, let alone apply it in practical terms.
Something has changed. I am not sure the change has been for the good.

When I was a Yout, we used to go around the block. This one house, a colonial built around 1650, that had been in the original family to that day, was my favourite stop.
The woman who lived in the house, with her family, always made Halloween special.
We had knife the apple. You held a kitchen knife in your mouth and from an height dropped it into an apple. If it stuck, you got the apple and whatever was in it. In my case, it was a dime.
It was a special place for me. The woman made homemade breads, cookies, there was story telling, she had musicians, actors in costume doing single parts. She made homemade cider. She had a gazillion pumpkins all carved up different, each with candles and coloured plastic.
She would dress in Victorian garb, complete with excessive costume jewelery.
I went there year after year. Each year, I had to sign her book, along with all the other trick or treaters.
Years later, too many miles, and too few smiles later, my exwife and son and I went trick or treating down my old neighborhood.
This woman, now magestic in her years, still wearing the Victorian attire, with costume jewelery, was having her Halloween shebang. My son, wearing a star wars costume, he was one of the really wacko desert people, and he had just trashed a Darth Vader, went to the house to collect some treats.
The woman remembered me. I was 8 when I went to her house, and my son was now 8. We were welcomed in and she brought out the photo album with me in it, the books I had signed, the apple skin from the apple I had speared to get the dime. My son got to see my signature. He was brought out a book, and he signed it.
It was great.
The next year we went to the same house. It was not the same. A group of folks who had a very interesting perspective on religion and Halloween, had stormed the house, smashed the pumpkins, her cat of many years was fatally injured, all the historic window glass, the ones with the birdseye, hand made panes were all smashed. They had painted Demon, witch, Satan all over her house. Just trashed the place.
She was sitting on her living room floor, in her Victorian dress, like a crumpled China Doll. All the books with the signatures had been ripped, all the photos were ripped.
It was like someone had broken a treasure, a piece of history. Her children came and got her, the house got sold, she was never heard from again.
The actors had been all Vaudville actors. They came just for the event. Buster Keaton was one, Geraldine Chaplin was another, Max Showwalter was another.
They were old, she was old, and it was hokey, but it was an event I never forgot.
My son barely recalls it. I can still see the wooden floors, with plaster caulking, the horsehair walls, the fish eye glass, the crystal, the spector.
Something has changed.
What have we lost?

Doc, those pranks are pulled on Mat night (the night before Halloween)
We still have pranksters here

Cher-

Where did you grow up?

It's sad reading this thread and thinking about the fun we had back then. What have we lost and what is replaceing it? We have watched Halloween slowly die, There are fewer houses lit up each year, and fewer grinning children in cute and weird costunes to put that same silly grin on your own face when you see the awe and excitement filling them. It started when some sick person put a razor blade in a apple, terrible that just a few sick people can kill such a great time for all! Now I'm not sure why it isn't coming back, that's been years ago and you don't hear of it happening any more. Then there were those who made a evil thing of it, When all it was was a time for kids to have fun and what is wrong with that! It seems like children have one fewer thing to look back on once their grown and smile about, and that's a shame. Children have to grow up to soon as it is. Oh ya can you ever get tired of Halloween candy? Not me!