What kid doesn’t like Halloween? Technically, Halloween isn’t a celebrated holiday where one gets off of work with pay, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas. It is, however, for a young’in liked almost as much as Christmas.

For me Halloween meant one thing; you got to eat as much candy as your little stomach could hold. And it was all free.

When I was young, Trick or Treating, as we referred to Halloween, was always well anticipated at least two weeks before the big night. All the kids would be planning out what they were going to dress up as.

If you were a little boy, you might be a cowboy, fireman, soldier, or maybe a monster. Little girls, tended to dress up as princesses, and witches. One could always buy their favorite costume at the local K-mart store.

Back in the 1960s, in my hometown of Florence, Ala. you could buy a costume for about two dollars. Even at that price though, a lot of kids would rather make their own costume. In fact, it was encouraged buy a lot of their parents, because simple put, two dollars was pretty hard to come by, just for something that wasn’t going to be worn but for one night a year.

Us kids, we didn’t hold any kind of resentment towards our parents because we were wearing homemade costumes, while some of the other kids were wearing brand new store-bought costumes; in fact we rather liked it.

For one night a year all of us little boys were allowed to play with our momma’s make-up and not have to worry about being called a sissy by anybody. The red lip stick was always cool, because it looked just like blood, and some of the other stuff was good for camouflage for a soldier going into combat.

Another thing about Trick or Treating in the 1960s in our little community, was your momma’s and daddy’s didn’t have too much too worry about some tragedy befallen their kids, such as getting kidnapped or beat up or even murdered by some deranged psycho. I guess something like that might could have happened, not that we didn’t have any crime in our town; but you must remember where I came from we were all just plain old country folk. We just couldn’t see bringing that kind of misery on another’s family; and besides, if someone did have some sort of inclination to do something that evil they couldn’t ever get away with it, because everyone knew everybody else.

Our neighbors were so close, we knew what time of day the neighbors on the left side of your property milked their cow and what time the neighbors on the right side collected the eggs from the hen house. Nothing happened without someone knowing.

Candy definitely was one of the better things about Halloween, aside from pulling a trick or two on someone; because that one day a year you got to eat some types of candy that you normally didn’t get. For instance, there were the orange colored marshmallow peanuts, and then there was the candy corn, Bazooka Joe bubble gum, pixie sticks, suckers, all kinds of miniature chocolate candy bars, and don’t forget the old faithful peanut nugget wrapped in a orange or black colored piece of wax paper.

Some of our neighbors made homemade cookies and candies to give to the kids. I remember this one old lady, on every Halloween she made homemade peanut bridle.

There was this one old man, he didn’t give us anything to eat, but he did give us water to drink. Now this wasn’t water like most folks got from a city water system, but was water that was hand drawn from a well. And let me tell you this there ain’t no kind of water any better than fresh well water that is drank from a metal ladle out of an old metal bucket.

This old feller’s house was the last one on our Trick or Treating route every year and after a hard night of Halloweening, man that cool water sure tasted good. If I close my eyes I can still see him now, sitting out on his front porch in a rocking chair, with a pair of Carhart overalls on, and a big chaw of Red Man chewing tobacco stuck in one side of his cheek.

He’d be grinning ear to ear as we walked up to his front porch, and he almost always said the same thing, “ Oh Lawdy, ain’t it been a hot’en this evening. Why don’t ya’ll young’ins get you some of this cold water to cool down with.”

The bucket sat on one side of the porch with an old ladle draped over the side. Everybody took turns. We all drank from the same ladle. People back then didn’t worry about germs.

After we all got a drink, we’d tell the old man, “Much obliged for the drink mister, thanky.”

Looking back on Halloween when I was a boy, I can easily recollect a memory that will scare me so bad that even now my heart will skip ten beats. But I choose, rather, to look back on Halloween, not so much as a time of frightful images but rather a time of warm thoughts and acts of kindness.

Like the little old lady who every year made the kids homemade peanut brittle and the old man who gave the kids only water because he was too poor to buy any candy. These are the types of things I like to remember best about Halloween; the things that bring on a warm smile.