What was trick or treating like for you as a kid?

[Gonolz]

We always got dressed up and went door-to-door to all the houses in our own neighborhoods, usually for several hours.

I was talking with friends today and there were stories of people driving or busing kids into the "good" neighborhoods, which I had heard of before, but still some walking house to house. One couple I know gave away about 2,000 pieces of candy before running out.

One thing I had never heard of was "trunk-or-treat" where basically a bunch of cars gather in a church parking lot and hand out candy to kids who have to walk all of 6 feet from one candy trough to the other. Has society really gotten so lazy that parents have to take kids to one compressed feeding frenzy location instead of spending a nice night walking house to house?

 

[NolaNole9]

There were people driving from house to house in my neighborhood. First time I'd seen that.

 

[squiffynole]

I walked around our block just before dusk and saw maybe 10 extra suv/minivans parked along the neighborhood streets. Two had Georgia plates, those darn northern carpetbagging kids.

We turned off the lights but people still came, I wanted to put the sprinkler on across the driveway but my wife would not go for it.

Meanwhile my buddy across town had no one at all come to his door.

 

[vtribe]

Damn shame how lazy America has gotten that I saw kids that were being driven from house to house. Wtf is up with that??

 

[DFSNOLE]

We dressed and walked door to door. Now I live in a rural area on a dead end street with no other roads around us. The few kids we had were driven here.

 

[skramer100]

In Chicago we went around our neighborhood, but it was huge. Once I moved to Jersey, it was very rural area where I lived, so we went to our friends houses and trick or treated at their neighborhood. But none of this trunk or treat, drive around crap. We had to earn that candy by walking a few miles that night.

 

[FSUdawg]

I live out in the sticks and my neighborhood is only one of a few in the immediate area, so a lot of people who don't live in neighborhoods come to our neighborhood. It is typical for residents here to give out over 1500 pieces of candy on the night. We even had a damn school bus come into the neighborhood, and yes it had about 35-40 people on it when it pulled in.

As for the walking, our family walked about half of our neighborhood (probably a little over 1.5 miles in total). However, there were cars lined along all the streets as people were too lazy to walk. We even had one car from outside the neighborhood trail in a golf cart. They parked in our pool parking lot and then drove the golf cart door to door...and yes, they pulled the golf cart into every driveway and got as close to every door so their kids didn't have to walk from the curb to the door.

 

[FSUSarah]

We always met at my grandmothers house in St. Augustine. We walked the neighborhood. She lived very close to the Fort and it was always an awesome time.

At our old place in Savannah, we walked the neighborhood with the kid. For the most part, everyone did that and it was good. However, there were people that drove around.

Our first experience here in Hattiesburg wasn't that great. EVERYONE drove their kids around. The neighborhood is older and doesn't have sidewalks, which made it tricky for us to walk. Very frustrating. No wonder Mississippi is one of the fattest states in the Union.

 

[SeaPA]

I grew up in a community that was a mix of young families and retirees, where everyone in the community knew each other. It was somewhat spread out, with decent sized lots (not like today's developments where you can reach out your window & touch your neighbor's house). It was also a relatively new community, so a lot of the lots were vacant.

They always had a big Halloween party at the community center, with costume contests, kids games & such. Everybody met there; shortly after dark, all of the kids loaded up in the back of a handful of pickup trucks & they drove us around the community. Get to the start of a street, everybody out; hit all the houses on that street & the truck picked you up at the end of the road to take you to the next street. After hitting all of the houses, back to the center for the remainder of the party.

My siblings & I won all won the costume contest a couple of times apiece, always in a costume mom made. I don't recall ever having a store-bought costume.

It was quite cool.

 

[CC0492]

Trick or treating in FL as a kid was easy as all the streets are flat and the houses are all in rows anc the neighborhoods are all square grids. In GA, none of these streets are flat and you have to have the conditioning of a marathon runner to make it up and down some if these steep hills. I understand some of the driving that goes on, but it's getting worse.

 

[NDallasRuss]

I think the trunk or treating is usually when it's the members of a church or other group that don't all live next to each other can get together and hang out, and their kids can go car to car, where it's people that they know - rather than driving them all over town to do the same - just more efficient process.

As for driving into neighborhoods - where I live is pretty rural: in 7.5 years we've never had a trick or treater come down this road. So, we take the kid "into town" so that she and her friends can go hit up some of the more densely populated neighborhoods. I think that a lot of the people that live farther out do that. It's not to get to "richer" neighborhoods - just to get them into civilization where there's some candy to be gotten.

 

[FreeFlyNole]

When I was a kid we dressed up and went door to door in a mad hustle so we could get to everyone, then if there was time we did a quick costume change and tried to hit them again. Then for late night we went back to the houses that stiffed us or had some jerk answer the door bitching about Halloween with the egg barrage.

One year it was pouring rain so my mom took us to the mall and we trick or treated inside the mall store to store. It was still fun and we got a lot of candy, but not nearly as fun as the door to door bit.

I don't know if you guys remember but I got on here three Halloween's ago and whined about all the poor immigrant kids that bused to Stapleton in Denver and trick or treated with their older brothers or uncles that just used the event as an excuse to case the houses, that night I had my bike and all my power tools stolen out of my garage. I'd say more than 2/3s of the kids that came to the door there were kids from poor neighborhoods that just raided the middle class / upper middle class neighborhoods for the good candy.

As for the trunk or treat, we took my 2 kids to one of these fall festivals at my daughter's school (it's Baptist) on Friday night and they had the trunk or treat thing going. It was good for kids my kids age (3/2). However I couldn't see doing that as an able bodied 8 year old.

I live in the perfect neighborhood for Trick or Treating now. We have 170 single family homes, and 145 town homes. And it is one of those newer neighborhoods that Sea was talking about that you can almost touch your neighbors house in. So from a economy of movement standpoint it's a great option. There are a lot of kids in this neighborhood though so I'd say it was 60% from in the neighborhood and 40% from outside, but not so much poor kids, just kids from other beachside neighborhoods. I don't have any problem with the poor kids coming over, everybody deserves candy on Halloween in a safe environment and I don't mind shelling out the cash to dish out the good stuff, but leave your dirtbag 17 year old theiving ass brother at home.

Church even with games in the background, we were probably the only kids that weren't dressed up:

They had snowcones, which were a hit:

My gang prior to the neighborhood trick or treating outting:

The two year old was very easily distracted:

It was a battle to get him to keep his lid on. He was a headless Scrappy Doo.

My dog was not too into it.

My girl with our neighbors kids, the little Care Bear was terrified of anyone in a mask, she needs some remedial Halloween training. Their Dad is an internal medicine doc and their mom is a dentist, so they give out tooth brushes and pretzels. I was sure my house was going to be egged in collateral damage. Somehow we survived.

 

[dmm5157]

Started out as walking door to door until I was about 8 or 9. Gangs were pretty bad in our city back then, so the malls started doing trick or treating so kids didn't have to go door to door.

We also did festivals at the church to give kids more options.

Pretty sure the last time we went door to door was when I was 9, at least in our neighborhood. Then it switched to going to my aunt and uncle's neighborhood that lived in a better neighborhood.

 

[CC0492]

We dressed and walked door to door. Now I live in a rural area on a dead end street with no other roads around us. The few kids we had were driven here.

Dang. Last house on the left or cabin in the woods.

 

[KitingHigh]

We have a few neighborhoods around us that are well known for houses that go all out.

An area known as the pink streets (the streets are actually pink) is right next to us and our good friends live there. We leave and go to their parents neighborhood because the pink streets become a defacto amusement park Halloween night. Hundreds of cars bring thousands of people to trick or treat there. It used to be fun, but now it's just a zoo and not worth it. The streets are a mass of people and one can wait ten minutes or more at each house in line to get candy.

 

[dero316]

Usually walked door to door but a few years we had a "hay ride" aka someone's dad with a pickup or a flat bed and hay bales. The trunk-or-treats seem like they're mostly for younger kids/toddlers that can't handle the long walks.

 

[F4Gary]

We had zero kids on our street this time. But, our streets only have a streetlight on the corners, so it's pretty dark in the middle of the blocks.

 

[smhnole]

Very rural town resulted in about 15 kids in a hay filled trailer that was towed by a tractor. We'd stop at each house, run down the 50-75 yard driveway to get candy and then run back before riding to the next house. People would hide in the woods and scare us, they'd would set up trails through the woods for us to walk through that led to a witch next to a campfire with candy or have a lighted "ghost" on a cable that would fly down the driveway above our heads. It was always a blast, but we stopped around 8 or 9 years old.

 

[Fijimn]

If I recall right, usually parents walked us around the block and then we end up as someone's house to trade candy and the parents would get loaded. Parents stopped following when we got to about 5th grade and we all usually ended up at the park with the older kids.

We had terrible weather this year. We don't usually get a ton of kids and most of my neighbors were gone anyway. Ended up getting a pretty good amount of kids, even though it rained all night. My little one didn't want to go trick or treating. But really enjoyed handing out candy to the kids. She kept yelling: "daddy, more peoples...more peoples."

 

[DanC78]

We stayed in our own neighborhood. We would go house to house and then would change costumes and do it again.

Parents did not go with us. They stayed home and passed out candy.

I loved Halloween as a kid!

We have kids bused in to our neighborhood. I bought $50 worth of candy and didn't pass it all out. Last year it was gone in about 45 minutes.

We also do a little block party for the kids in the cul-de-sac before they go out. This year we hung doughnuts from a tree tied to a string and had the kids eat them without using their hands. It was cute, kids had fun.

 

[BelemNole]

As a kid nearly 40 years ago we just ran from door to door as fast as we could. I don't recall parents being involved, but I had older siblings so they probably had to take care of me when I was really young. Once I was 3-4th grade or so I was off with my friends. We were on base those years so no one worried about their kids. 5th and 6th grades we ran wild thru a nicer neighborhood outside of DC.

This year I had a few dozen kids show up. Not sure how many were local and how many imports. A couple weren't even in costume. A few were clearly in their later years in high school. Who cares? Let kids have fun. As least they were outside and not glued to their phones. No one showed up past about 8:45

 

[noleit]

I grew up near Vegas so tricks were as prevalent/popular as treats.

 

[AllNoles]

We always got dressed up and went door-to-door to all the houses in our own neighborhoods, usually for several hours.

I was talking with friends today and there were stories of people driving or busing kids into the "good" neighborhoods, which I had heard of before, but still some walking house to house. One couple I know gave away about 2,000 pieces of candy before running out.

One thing I had never heard of was "trunk-or-treat" where basically a bunch of cars gather in a church parking lot and hand out candy to kids who have to walk all of 6 feet from one candy trough to the other. Has society really gotten so lazy that parents have to take kids to one compressed feeding frenzy location instead of spending a nice night walking house to house?

I don't know if it as much lazy as it is overprotective. I don't have memories of parents with us. I am sure they did it when we were tiny, but we also likely only went to a handful of houses. By the time we were 8 or so, we were on our own and went right at dusk (when the time change was before Halloween, thanks Bush) and stayed out until NO ONE was answering doors. By the time we were 11-12, at that point we started looking for trouble to get into.

I *think* the trunk or treat thing started with churches who did it on Halloween night to take a lot of the "evil" out of Halloween. The ones I have seen have nothing scary and have rules (or at least strongly encourage) about nothing scary or evil. Some even prohibit anything "magical." You can learn a lot about a church by seeing the trunk or treat thing. That said, it seems to have become more mainstream. My step daughter was at a few with friends, all before Halloween night, at places like one of the kids' karate studio. All in all, I think the idea is pretty cool for those with little kids who really don't need to be going more than a few hundred total yards.

There were people driving from house to house in my neighborhood. First time I'd seen that.

That's kind of sad, unless places are really far apart and they were people with little kids. I have seem some folks go all out on their golf carts and take the kids around while they get hammered. That's not a really bad way to trick or treat, assuming you aren't overparenting by following your preteens around.

I LOVED Halloween. All the kids I grew up with did. It may have been the funnest night of every year. It seems very different now.

 

[2noles1cup]

Damn shame how lazy America has gotten that I saw kids that were being driven from house to house. Wtf is up with that??

because some homeowners don't care about it and turn their lights off.

When i was a kid, our neighborhood had a pretty good turnout as far as houses go. It was great. Occasional HS kid would drive around egging kids later in the night. we were always unchaperoned and could pretty much roam anywhere in the neighborhood. that was the 80's and 90's though.

 

[Formerly Rockymtnole]

House to house as fast as you could run. Growing up in South Florida you had to choose your costumes carefully or you'd overheat. Parents would hang out on the sidewalks and try to keep up but most said screw it after awhile.

We had probably close to 100 kids Saturday evening. We have tons of kids living in the neighborhood so I doubt many imports.

 

[wdnole]

Lived most of my childhood very rural in North Carolina, and we went around to the houses we could walk to and also some driving, or went to a party at the school. Most kids in my small town had the same issue...

Then when I was 11 my parents decided to move back to Florida and ended up in Winter Park. I distinctly remember my last Halloween of trick or treating with 2 of my good WP buddies... we were 12 years old and did not wear any costumes... we just went around our nice WP neighborhood and basically told every home owner, "give us some candy, or else". We all filled up our pillow case bags with mucho booty, even with many homeowners complaining about us not wearing costumes.

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

When I was a kid we dressed up and went door to door in a mad hustle so we could get to everyone, then if there was time we did a quick costume change and tried to hit them again. Then for late night we went back to the houses that stiffed us or had some jerk answer the door bitching about Halloween with the egg barrage.

One year it was pouring rain so my mom took us to the mall and we trick or treated inside the mall store to store. It was still fun and we got a lot of candy, but not nearly as fun as the door to door bit.

I don't know if you guys remember but I got on here three Halloween's ago and whined about all the poor immigrant kids that bused to Stapleton in Denver and trick or treated with their older brothers or uncles that just used the event as an excuse to case the houses, that night I had my bike and all my power tools stolen out of my garage. I'd say more than 2/3s of the kids that came to the door there were kids from poor neighborhoods that just raided the middle class / upper middle class neighborhoods for the good candy.

As for the trunk or treat, we took my 2 kids to one of these fall festivals at my daughter's school (it's Baptist) on Friday night and they had the trunk or treat thing going. It was good for kids my kids age (3/2). However I couldn't see doing that as an able bodied 8 year old.

I live in the perfect neighborhood for Trick or Treating now. We have 170 single family homes, and 145 town homes. And it is one of those newer neighborhoods that Sea was talking about that you can almost touch your neighbors house in. So from a economy of movement standpoint it's a great option. There are a lot of kids in this neighborhood though so I'd say it was 60% from in the neighborhood and 40% from outside, but not so much poor kids, just kids from other beachside neighborhoods. I don't have any problem with the poor kids coming over, everybody deserves candy on Halloween in a safe environment and I don't mind shelling out the cash to dish out the good stuff, but leave your dirtbag 17 year old theiving ass brother at home.

Church even with games in the background, we were probably the only kids that weren't dressed up:

They had snowcones, which were a hit:

My gang prior to the neighborhood trick or treating outting:

The two year old was very easily distracted:

It was a battle to get him to keep his lid on. He was a headless Scrappy Doo.

My dog was not too into it.

My girl with our neighbors kids, the little Care Bear was terrified of anyone in a mask, she needs some remedial Halloween training. Their Dad is an internal medicine doc and their mom is a dentist, so they give out tooth brushes and pretzels. I was sure my house was going to be egged in collateral damage. Somehow we survived.

scooby dooby doo!

 

[TarponSpringsNole]

I was kid in the 70's and we would zoom door to door as fast as we could. We always wore costumes and had a blast---and this was in the eastern part of Gary, Ind mind you. My parents would let us go by ourselves with a big group of friends. Last time I trick or treated was probably 7th grade.

 

[ohio#1nolefan]

In short...it sure seemed like a helluva lot more fun back in the day. Of course everything seemed like a helluva lot more fun back in the day..

 

[billanole]

Before 4th grade we lived in a small town where my brothers and I walked neighborhoods for an hour or so unsupervised. We moved out to Lake Bradford in Tally and there were only about 15 houses within several miles. With a few buddies and my younger brother we hit all of those (with minimal costumes at best) and some of the older neighbors would bring us inside for ice cream, cakes, etc... Never knew until later one of the older houses was the home of a "flasher"who never did anything around us.
The neighborhood where wifey grew up was the first place I ever saw kids being driven around. It was a real eye opener but I made the most of it by hanging out on the balcony and scaring kids.
We have been out in the sticks for years now and the only kids around us are in high school. I told wifey if any of the kids showed up, I would offer them a beer and and a burger.

 

[goldmom]

We have a few neighborhoods around us that are well known for houses that go all out.

An area known as the pink streets (the streets are actually pink) is right next to us and our good friends live there. We leave and go to their parents neighborhood because the pink streets become a defacto amusement park Halloween night. Hundreds of cars bring thousands of people to trick or treat there. It used to be fun, but now it's just a zoo and not worth it. The streets are a mass of people and one can wait ten minutes or more at each house in line to get candy.

That's St. Pete, right?

I'm a baby boomer, so back in the day we could go by ourselves while Mom stayed home to give out candy. It was super safe.
We also stopped when we were 11 or 12. My kids generation went until they were 15 or 16. My daughter and her husband still dress up just to answer the door and give out candy to this day.
Bus loads of Hispanic kids came to our neighborhood in Dallas, and we didn't mind. Kids should have a safe place with well kept sidewalks and streetlights to have a fun experience. And their Moms always made them say thank you.

 

[FSUTribe76]

Two things I found interesting related to this thread.

One is that the "good old days" probably had a higher homicide and violent crime rate than today depending on when the "good old days" are per the poster. We're actually sitting at the lowest violent crime and homicide rates per capita since 1886 (NOT 1986). If the good old days was 1940 good news that was one of the two low points just slightly higher than today. 1950 was about the same as 1940 and today. By 1960 it was already trending back up as it was 5.1 murders per 100,000 people (compared to 4.2 today). By 1970 it was almost double today's murder rate 7.9. By 1980 America hit its peak murder rate of 10.2. In 1990 it was still 9.4 and in 2000 it was down to 5.5. By 2010 it was only 4.8 practically the same as the 1950s. I find this pretty interesting because the rate of spree killing (aka school shootings and whatnot) is WAY up thanks to our love of automatic weaponry and zero testing. And the murder rates amongst black on black and Latino on latino are actually up. So that means the odds of a white kid being murdered by a stranger (which is already low most kids are killed by relatives not Freddy Kruegaresque serial killers and pedophiles) is the lowest it's been since the 1830s. Yet soccer moms now hide the kiddies away stunting their growth.

2) An interesting thing I found is the thing most correlated to homicide rates were not immigration, economy, war or peace time etc but the prevalence of lead based products in the home. Lead paint and other sources of lead ingestion in homes was practically nonexistent prior to 1876. Then the use spiked. There's a rough 21 year lag between the rate of lead paint and homicide but the two spikes in production and use of lead based household products where it's use peaked in 1916 and the murder rate peaked in 1937, then it's use hit a low in 1936 as the Great Depression was on and new paint and household products using lead were consumed at a much lower rate which corresponded to a low in murder rate in 1957. Then its use spiked again peaking at 1959 where the hippies and prehippy beatniks started protesting lead in gas and paint which correlates with the peak in 1980 of the homicide rate. It's use continued to be high just lower until plummeting in 1976 which correlates to the 2007 sharp decline in murder rate. So there is a pretty clear correlation if not causation between lead in consumer products and the murder rate 21 years later. The cycles even ebbed and flowed perfectly since 1876.​

 

[Nolomite]

What was trick or treating like for you as a kid?

Best day & night of the year

 

[CC0492]

Bus loads of Hispanic kids came to our neighborhood in Dallas, and we didn't mind. And their Moms always made them say thank you.

You mean gracias.

 

[DFSNOLE]

What was trick or treating like for you as a kid?

Best day & night of the year

Why are you yelling?

 

[cmanole]

What was trick or treating like for you as a kid?

Best day & night of the year

Why are you yelling?

Basil Exposition: The shouting is a temporary side-effect of the unfreezing process.

Nolomite: Yes... I'm having difficulty controlling THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE.

 

[billanole]

Two things I found interesting related to this thread.

One is that the "good old days" probably had a higher homicide and violent crime rate than today depending on when the "good old days" are per the poster. We're actually sitting at the lowest violent crime and homicide rates per capita since 1886 (NOT 1986). If the good old days was 1940 good news that was one of the two low points just slightly higher than today. 1950 was about the same as 1940 and today. By 1960 it was already trending back up as it was 5.1 murders per 100,000 people (compared to 4.2 today). By 1970 it was almost double today's murder rate 7.9. By 1980 America hit its peak murder rate of 10.2. In 1990 it was still 9.4 and in 2000 it was down to 5.5. By 2010 it was only 4.8 practically the same as the 1950s. I find this pretty interesting because the rate of spree killing (aka school shootings and whatnot) is WAY up thanks to our love of automatic weaponry and zero testing. And the murder rates amongst black on black and Latino on latino are actually up. So that means the odds of a white kid being murdered by a stranger (which is already low most kids are killed by relatives not Freddy Kruegaresque serial killers and pedophiles) is the lowest it's been since the 1830s. Yet soccer moms now hide the kiddies away stunting their growth.

2) An interesting thing I found is the thing most correlated to homicide rates were not immigration, economy, war or peace time etc but the prevalence of lead based products in the home. Lead paint and other sources of lead ingestion in homes was practically nonexistent prior to 1876. Then the use spiked. There's a rough 21 year lag between the rate of lead paint and homicide but the two spikes in production and use of lead based household products where it's use peaked in 1916 and the murder rate peaked in 1937, then it's use hit a low in 1936 as the Great Depression was on and new paint and household products using lead were consumed at a much lower rate which corresponded to a low in murder rate in 1957. Then its use spiked again peaking at 1959 where the hippies and prehippy beatniks started protesting lead in gas and paint which correlates with the peak in 1980 of the homicide rate. It's use continued to be high just lower until plummeting in 1976 which correlates to the 2007 sharp decline in murder rate. So there is a pretty clear correlation if not causation between lead in consumer products and the murder rate 21 years later. The cycles even ebbed and flowed perfectly since 1876.​

Agreed about the downturn in violence, but it sure does garner headlines daily. One of the saddest things to me about all of the school killings is the difference in attitudes about weapons on campus and in society as a whole. All my peeps carried a pocket knife (and still do) from about first grade onward. All of the hunter/fisher types at Godby High when I attended had shot guns or rifles in racks in their trucks. Nobody ever was shot or injured at school back then. Hell, half of em didn't lock their trucks...
Of course, the dawn of automatic weaponry was not yet upon us. A Thompson sub machine gun was the only one we had heard of and it was illegal to own.

 

[KitingHigh]

That's St. Pete, right?

I'm a baby boomer, so back in the day we could go by ourselves while Mom stayed home to give out candy. It was super safe.
We also stopped when we were 11 or 12. My kids generation went until they were 15 or 16. My daughter and her husband still dress up just to answer the door and give out candy to this day.
Bus loads of Hispanic kids came to our neighborhood in Dallas, and we didn't mind. Kids should have a safe place with well kept sidewalks and streetlights to have a fun experience. And their Moms always made them say thank you.

Yes. It's the Southernmost part of St. Petersburg. Nice neighborhood in pretty close proximity to some not so nice ones.

 

[goldmom]

You mean gracias.

Actually they all spoke English. You have to remember this was Texas and they are taught to speak the language. Most of them are born here.

 

[vevois23]

Grew up in a decent neighborhood that was mostly families so there was a couple of loops to swing through and it took a bit.

Moved to a similar neighborhood recently and its the same. Add to it there is a neighborhood party around 530 then everyone disperses to go walk for candy. This year was my year to stay at home and the wife take the kids walking. I about died laughing when my son rings the doorbell and says "Trick or Treat!" Even though I gave him candy, I had to tell him you don't take from your own stash.