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Halloween brings vivid memories to my mind. When I was a little girl it was children of about 6 years to 14 who trick-or-treated, and the little ones were kept at home. We would look forward to our costumes for weeks and usually made them ourselves. Ghosts were the most popular and plenty of good sheets were cut before mom found out. In those days no one had store-bought costumes. One year I was a princess. A pretty white cocktail dress with a gauzy top was pinned in the back to fit me, and the skirt that would have been just below the knee for a lady, came to the ankles on me. I thought there was none better. I remember the year my friend was a robot and we used poster paint to cover a large cardboard box and cut holes for the arms and head, and holes in a brown paper bag for the robot head.

The afternoon of Halloween we*d spend an hour carving pumpkins, put candles in, light them and set them on the steps to our house to welcome trick-or-treaters. In those days we collected for Unicef on Halloween night and we never went out without the orange box to collect coins for hungry children. The candy we collected for ourselves in brown paper bags.

We went out in small packs of children. It was always completely dark out. It was safe then and our parents didn*t worry sending us out alone. We*d have felt mortified to have our parents go with us. The other kids might think we were babies! Besides, parents walk too slowly! They*d cramp our style! We wanted more candy so we wanted to run between doors and as quickly down the streets as possible!

I remember when we*d get to a corner, we*d look down the other streets and decide which one had the most porch lights on. Porch lights meant they were offering candy. We*d bang on a door and yell, "Trick or Tree-eat!" and if we were feeling particularly saucy, "Trick or Tree-eat, smell my fee-eet, give me something sweet to ee-eat!" Nothing bashful about us. This was pure candy greed and we weren*t the least ashamed of it. And yet, I don*t think any of us dreamed taking more than one piece per house or forgetting to say thank you.