Happy Halloween!

On this esteemed holiday, I thought I would write about what it is like to celebrate Halloween in the small town where I grew up . . . it is one of the best holidays in that town. For weeks before the actual day, kids are choosing costumes, with no thought whatsoever of what costume will best accommodate the possibility of cold weather on Halloween night. One of my favorite costumes was a Pocahontas outfit, marked by a brown burlap dress, fringy boots and braids in my hair.

The trick-or-treating process is very small town, as you know the residents of almost every home you visit. Seriously. Every house. I could drive you through my hometown today and tell you who lived in almost every house in a one-mile radius around my house, as well as who lived in many other houses in town. As a younger kid, parents come along for the trick-or-treating, but when you grow a bit older, you can do this without parents, because everyone knows everyone and it was a safer time back then. Halloween parties at this age involved fresh apple cider, bobbing for apples and sometimes homemade haunted houses. (Speaking of haunted houses, my brother and I once created one in our basement that was awesome, with grapes in dishes for closed-eye feeling (they feel like eyeballs) and other tactile delights, a coffin in the cabinet underneath the one where my father kept his guns and a frightening darkened path around the furnace.)

When a kid reached high school age, not only could she trick-or-treat alone, but she could also engage in pranks with her friends. Being small town kids, our pranks were never destructive or illegal, of course. Our preferred pranking method was "T-P'ing" (short for toilet papering), which meant taking rolls of toilet paper and throwing them up into trees again and again until the tree was a white work of art with strands of toilet paper dangling everywhere. Few escaped this fate, though being a TP victim was actually seen as a badge of honor by some (i.e., "they like me, they really like me"). One of my favorite TP escapades involved the convent attached to the girls' Catholic high school I attended.

Just a few memories on this Scariest of Days. And these memories are different from those of modern Dallas kids, where in one fancy neighborhood, they put a huge TV on the front lawn at the height of trick-or-treat time and 50 kids gather there to watch Veggie Tales.

Enough memories for now . . . have a happy and safe Halloween!