TRICK OR TREAT?

  

  The kitchen calendar flipped to October 1, 1952, and I started to think of Halloween and my annual monumental decision - What would I be this year?  But that day, fate stepped in when I saw a full-face rubber mask of Frankenstein in the window of W.T. Grants.  It was $7.50 - yikes, a fortune in kid money, but I was sure I could talk my grandfather into a "loan".  My most excellent costume of all time was in the works.

    My grandmother was a great seamstress, and she turned an old black remnant into a monster's jacket. Next, a feat of genius, she fit the jacket perfectly, and it went over a large cardboard box, which gave me giant shoulders. My pop gave up his favorite pair of black work pants, and he nailed a couple of slabs of pine to the soles of a pair of worn-out work boots. I clomped around the house all week. Boris Karloff would have been proud.

    The wait slowed the clock as usual. The days ticked off. Now in South Millville, treating or Treating took more than one day to ensure we got to everyone.   We went out in a gang two nights before and then the big one, Halloween, filling a pillow case each night - with no worries about straight pins in our Baby Ruth bars.  As a warm-up, we also appeared at the Bacon School PTA Halloween party, marched around the gym, and ate hard gingerbread cookies from the cafeteria with a cider chaser.

    Back to mischief night - we tossed toilet paper over Aunt Kathleen's trees and ran.  We threw a couple of eggs at each other and would have turned over an outhouse if we could find one, but they had disappeared when we got city water.   We did not think of burning a neighbor's car, stealing a TV from a department store window, or destroying anything - we just had fun and always hoped we would meet the Jersey Devil at the second street hollow - just once.  But we never saw him/her/it.

    Each night, I donned the mask and stumbled out into the dark.  Actually seeing in the mask was not an option.  All around us were the hoots and shrieks of ghouls and a couple of gals dressed as Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring – a popular character on The Howdy Doody show and one of the best-selling store-bought costumes at our Woolworth's 5 & 10 @ $2.89.  I made the rounds from third to second and back with my friends.  Warren was choking in the skeleton costume he had outgrown about two years ago.  Danny was the Lone Ranger with a mask and a cap gun ready.  He fired off a few cap rounds at every door as a greeting.  And Sylvia was a "something" – none of us could figure just what.  But it was a raggedy, mismatched outfit held together with safety pins that decades later a famed pop star would wear the same on TV and change the world of fashion for teenage girls.  

    Inside my prized rubber mask, I was drenched as my breath condensed in the cool fall air into a moist and steamy mixture that got into my eyes.  This was a small price for what I was sure would be the biggest candy haul ever.  I thought that nobody would ever guess who this giant monster was.  I had practiced my monster voice all week, trying to sound like Mr. Boris K., but I was immediately recognized at each door.  "Great, get up there, Calvin," my uncle Harold said.   My bag of treats grew heavy, and I  dragged it behind me.  And then it was over, as all holidays must - too soon..

I staggered home and immediately got out of my wet mask to dump my haul on the living room floor and counted my stash.  32 candy bars, 7 homemade chocolate chip cookies, 46 cents in change, a rusty token from the NYC subway, and a pencil which said, Prince's Lumber Company.  I had bagged enough sugar to make a dentist drool.  Of all the treats, I preferred the regular-size Reese's Cups over the others.  They had a special flavor on the candy connoisseur's palate for at least two bites. On the other hand, I never ate the Mary Janes, those hard chomping waxy morsels that my mom tossed after they hung around for a few months.

    I put my dripping mask away, and it would stay on that shelf in my room until a yard sale 10 years hence.   But it remains the best mask I ever had for Halloween.