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Thursday 10 October 2013

Trick or Treat

Halloween is celebrated differently in North America than in other parts of the world.  The main event of the day is 'Trick or Treating', although this is fast becoming less popular due to safety considerations.  After dusk, with younger children accompanied by parents, children dressed in Halloween costumes meant to be scary, go door to door to gather teats.  Generally the tricks amount to soaping windows with a bar of soap, unravelling toilet paper around a tree in a neighbour's yard, or overturning trash cans in the alleys behind the houses. 

Looking back, it was a fun time going through the neighbourhood, seeing so many of the homes decorated with fierce looking, lighted, jack-o-lanterns on the front doorsteps, and the excitement of children in their costumes as they run from house to house.  I usually went out with my brother or some friends and always came home with a pillowcase full of Halloween candy, peanuts, and apples.  This 'loot' was something you bragged about to your classmates the next day in school.  Because of their generosity, I had special places to target, two of them being small, family run, general stores near my home.

There was one Halloween that is hard for me to recall fondly because of what happened.  Our family lived on 102nd Street and 115th Avenue in Edmonton.  It was not a main street and was not as well lit at night as it might have been.  Just one block down from our house and on the same street was the school I attended.  Spruce Avenue School got its name from the two huge spruce trees that stood in front of the main entrance.  The yard was spooky at night, more so on Halloween, and was a favorite spot for youths (called hoodlums then) to hide in the dark shadows of the branches waiting to prey upon unsuspecting children and steal their candy.  Somehow my brother and I had forgotten about this.  Four of these hoodlums sprang out at us as we passed by the school.  They shouted dire threats that caused our feet to move faster as we attempted to flee.  We headed down an avenue to 101 Street, a brightly lit main thoroughfare.  Our attackers dropped back when they saw where we were going.  After catching our breathe, we continued trick and treating but the fun had gone out of it and we went home.  We never told our parents what happened because mother was not keen on the idea of trick or treating and it was one of the last times we celebrated Halloween in that fashion.