I was in the sixth grade when I celebrated my last Halloween.  That is to say, the last Halloween as a child who enjoyed the school festival and trick-or-treating.

                Each classroom was transformed into a special treat.  One was a haunted house, another a cake walk, a fishing pond, white elephant sale and many more, each costing a dime or quarter to participate. At the end of the evening was a variety show put on by the parents who all acted very silly.  The kids loved it.   Proceeds went to the PTA. 

                When I was selected as one of five boys to be the “spook” in a Hit the Spook with a marshmallow game I was thrilled.  My mother drove me downtown to a five-and-dime to buy a mask.  She stayed in the car while I went in to get something to protect my face from all the marshmallows that were going to be thrown at me.  When I reached the big table in the middle of the store with the Halloween masks, I froze.

                My mother had a way of criticizing every purchase I ever made.  I picked up a mask that I liked but put it back because it cost too much.  I looked for something really cheap but they looked like something a first grader would wear.  Finally I picked out a face paint kit that cost very little.  Pleased that I was going to escape my mother’s wrath for wasting money, I ran out to the car where my mother had been waiting.

                “Where have you been?”  Her tone was withering.  “I thought I was about to die in this heat.  (author’s note:  we lived in Texas which is still very hot even in the last week of October)  I thought you were going to just run in, grab something and be right back out!  How long does it take to buy a silly Halloween mask anyway?”

                I showed her the makeup kit and tried to explain how cheap it was when she interrupted me.

                “Now how is that going to protect your face from those marshmallows?  I thought the whole idea of getting a mask was to protect yourself.”

                Back home I sewed together some old sheets into what I thought looked like a ghost costume.  I use the term sewing very loosely.  I used an old treadle machine which my mother and threaded for me.  At Halloween sunset my mother told me she was too tired to drive me back to school and I would have to walk.  It wasn’t that far so I didn’t mind.

                Halfway there, however, I remembered I had not brought my money which I had carefully put aside for the past month just for spending at the festival.  It was too late to go back home to get it and be at the school on time.

                When I did arrive I found out none of the other boys had shown up so I had to be the only “spook” getting pelted by marshmallows.  It was that night that I realized I really wasn’t that popular at school.  Too many of the boys were way too thrilled in throwing marshmallows at me.  This went on for an hour.

                Finally the teacher closed down the attraction and said I could go enjoy the rest of the festival.  Only I couldn’t.  I didn’t have any money to pay to play.  I couldn’t even see the variety show.

                One woman—I can’t remember if it were a teacher or a parent—who asked me what I was dressed up as.  “Are you supposed to be a little girl?”

                “No,” I responded weakly.  “A ghost.”

                “Well, you look more like a little girl.”

                When I walked home I didn’t even feel like trick-or-tricking at the neighbors’ houses.  The bloom was off the pumpkin, so to speak.

                The next time I remember having a good time at Halloween was when I had small children and chaperoned them around trick-or-treating.  We decorated the house with fake cobwebs and jack-o-lanterns.  Now the kids are grown and the local children don’t stop by our house.  Actually, I don’t think there’s wholesale trick-or-treating anywhere, with all the scares about poison in the candy.

                Ah, but in the early years, that was fun, before the last Halloween came along.