Sugar-Coated Memories of Halloween

It’s the time of year when our thoughts turn to Halloween. I eye candy displays at Target, not only marveling, but delighting, that they have set aside a square of the store to sell confectionery goods….er….Halloween candy.
Oooh………the large amounts of candy I collected All Hallow’s Eve when I was a kid! We were city kids, my brothers and sisters and I. That meant large concentrations of candy within a small geographic area. Not only that, but at that time, neighborhoods were very predictable, because all our folks just bought houses and stayed put. So much easier than when my own children were trick or treaters. They would have had a general idea of who would dole out the most generous amounts of quality candy; but, if housing values rose during the previous year, they were at the mercy of Lady Luck because the high rollers among the candied elite might well have gone on to better digs.
We kids would lay out our strategy of covering our three to four block territory, giving tips back and forth on whose house to skip as well as who had the best (translate ‘most’) candy to give. It was pretty typical that we came home three hours later, each with half a grocery bag filled with goodies. Then began the trading and the hiding of the delicacies under mattresses or beneath our beds. The candy still didn’t last us long, though. Halloween for us was what Mardi Gras is for New Orleans–a chance to party on.


As if we didn’t get candy the rest of the year! Phooey!


The Corner Store of My Childhood.

We were city kids, after all, my brothers and sisters and I. In my day, some fifty years ago, there were what we called penny candy display counters in every delicatessen in the neighborhood.
Those delis would be like bodegas are now. Old, with big glass front windows; but, then again, not at all like bodegas are now, there would be row upon row of penny candy enclosed in glass display cases–cinnamon-flavored red fish, sugar-coated peach stones, rows of dots that we licked off the white paper they were stuck to; there were Mary Janes, and red and black licorice sticks, one for a penny. As our eyes roamed up and down the case, we were followed by an old woman whose eyes watched patiently as the eager child walked up and down the length of the case, a speculative finger tracing the glass.
The woman or her male counterpart, might well be smoking a cigarette while they served us. Ah! The good old days! The small customer would relinquish his/her dime only when the order was satisfactorily filled. We had our choice of Bazooka gum in bubble gum flavor, peanut butter kisses, and red hots three for a penny. An interesting item, though not my favorite, Pez candy, had five Pez candies and a dispenser made of an animal head or some such to place on my headboard as a keeper. It was something I bought occasionally. Jaw breakers, king size to store in our cheeks like squirrels, would either a.) break our molars or b.) last for up to an hour of sugary fun.




Summers would find us daily buying creamsicles, orange, cherry and grape popsicles, for a nickel each. Our paths from home to the deli were strewn with papers that wrapped around a pedestrian’s feet on a windy, rainy day. It was like disengaging our small feet from silly putty as we struggled to release them from yesterday’s candy trash. Nobody cared.
This was before Lady Bird Johnson’s anti-litter campaign, which despite the serious nature of our current day crises, was and still is the single most important First Lady campaign to ever come along–of course, this is strictly from a city kid’s point of view.
When the city cleaning crews set up those aluminum mesh trash bins, every two blocks or so around our city of Buffalo, we eyed them with amusement and contempt. Ha! Nobody was going to make us band of street smart city kids pick up our wrappers. Nobody could do it! No siree!
Each mesh bin had a metal sign appended at a child’s eye level that read: “Stash your trash. Don’t be a litterbug.” Now, suddenly, it seemed the First Lady was using her auspicious power to call us names. We had been labeled with a slur! Litterbug! That hurt. This was serious.
Somehow, this anti-litter campaign was all tied up with her Beautify America campaign, too. Our parents took us for Sunday drives. They began to be able to see the trees in the woods and the sights along the way as the billboards began to be limited. They liked it! As her campaign got publicity for her stance in conserving forest lands and stripping national forest areas of billboards, too, our popsicle wrappers, and our ‘here’s to gum on your shoe’ attitude suddenly meant we were anti-conservation. What would Teddy Roosevelt say, we wondered.
“Bully for him,” our parents answered. “Pick up that wrapper. You heard me!”
We began to encounter the old women from the deli’s and their male counterparts, early in the mornings most school days. Even if it was raining a bit, they would be sweeping up the pavement in front of their shops. God help the kid who dropped a Twinkie wrapper or a coke cap.
“Pick up that garbage!” they would call as they straightened their backs which ached from sweeping. It had become personal. And it spread like wildfire across the country.
America had entered an era of clean cities, which we kids came to realize, filled us with pride in ourselves and our town. So. Roosevelt was right after all–the old carrot and big stick routine worked every time. Kate Kindle's Cloud Nine
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