We’re taking Captain Jelly Belly out for Halloween this year for the first time. At his own request he’ll be dressed as Spiderman. He’s still really little so we’ll probably just take him to the 10 closest houses around here and see how it goes.

In general though I find that Trick-Or-Treating has really fallen off in popularity. At our old house we usually got around 30 or 40 kids on Halloween. At our new place I expect even less, as we are on a crescent — probably just the kids from our own street will come around. By 7:30 the night is basically over. I find things like Halloween parties and treating-by-car, so you can hit just the houses of people you know, are becoming the norm. I understand why — dangerous times and all — but I feel nostalgic for the old ways.

When I was a kid, my mom would man the door and she’d get, easily, upwards of 250 kids at the door. I remember more than one year when she ran out of candy and resorted to giving out apples from our fruit cellar (no razor blades, but I’m sure the kids who took one didn’t get to eat it anyway). The first kids would show up around 5:30pm and there would still be knocks on the door as late as 9:30. It was an endless parade of scary monster costumes and kids with chocolate on their breath. This year I expect to get a few Elmos and princesses and that’ll be it.

Meanwhile, my dad, who was basically a professional Trick-Or-Treater, would take us out. In the peak years, when all four of us qualified for the treating age, we’d all go out for 2 or 3 hours. We’d cover whole subdivisions — us collecting in small plastic bags and my dad gathering our loot when the small bags got full into a garbage bag or two that he hauled around on his back. We’d come home and dump it all out to sort it and it was a major, major pile of candy. My mom would divide it all up by type and then divy it out in our lunches for, literally, the next two months. It’d be New Years before we were down to those orange-and-black wrapped molasses candies, which, over time, I learned to love. Sadly, I haven’t seen them for sale for a long time.

In any case, I’m always excited to be manning the door in our own home — it feels like tradition. I’m looking forward to whatever activity we get — and of course, any leftovers.

Trick or Treat!