Halloween candy gathering: It isn’t what it used to be

This Halloween, Youngest Brother and Younger Sister finally smartened up: Both of them decided to go trick-or-treating with friends who live in other neighborhoods.

Our street is not exactly trick-or-treater friendly. We live in a safe and lovely part of town and have good-natured neighbors; it’s just that our part of town is also a two-thirds of a mile long cul-de-sac partway up a mountain where the houses are a good distance apart and have long, sloping driveways.

According to Dad’s calculations, our house is visited by anywhere from six to 26 individuals during the two hours our town allots for trick-or-treating. We try to make it worth their while. Anyone who makes the trek to knock on our door is rewarded with a heaping handful of candy.

This was one of the hardest adjustments for our family to make when we moved to New Hampshire from upstate New York some umpteen years ago, where easy trick-or-treating was something we took for granted.

Oldest Younger Brother and I spent our prime candy-gathering years in a suburban subdivision where each house sat on a quarter of an acre. We could see more houses from our front door than are on our whole cul-de-sac here in New Hampshire. It was trick-or-treat paradise.

Each Halloween, Oldest Younger Brother and I were able to visit between 80 and 100 houses. We learned early on never to use those plastic pumpkins for collecting our candy. They would fill up before we reached the end of our street, and if they got too heavy, the handle would snap off and we’d have to carry them in our arms.

Pillow cases ended up being the best option. It was the only way to make it through the four streets that comprised our subdivision without having to make multiple trips back home to unload.

Nearly every house would have its lights on to welcome trick-or-treaters, and the streets would be packed with children and their parents. We’d encounter friends from school while making the rounds and compare notes – which houses were giving out full-sized candy bars, which houses had live people in costumes hiding out among their yard decorations. We had a few neighbors who really got into the holiday.

Had we remained in New York, I likely would’ve followed in the footsteps of many other neighborhood children who continued trick-or-treating through their high school years. My first Halloween in New Hampshire, however, showed me that this would not be practical in our new candy-gathering grounds.

A friend invited me to go trick-or-treating in her grandmother’s neighborhood, which was located in a populous area of Nashua, instead of traipsing around our own spread-out neighborhoods. It sounded like an excellent idea, and I accepted.

I didn’t realize at the time that Nashua was a good half-hour drive away. Adding an extra hour to our trick-or-treating time for transportation made it a later (and more tiring) evening than I had anticipated – Halloween was on a school night that year.

After comparing the amount of effort I expended with the amount of candy I collected, I decided it made more sense to go to the store and buy my own Halloween treats.

Oldest Younger Brother worked out a more frugal solution to the trick-or-treating conundrum: volunteering to hand out the candy. Since we have so few people coming to our door, he was able to chow down on plenty of leftovers.

As soon as Youngest Brother and Younger Sister were old enough to wear costumes, our parents did their best to take them trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood. The houses are far enough apart that it’s a good walk from house to house, but too close together to make driving worthwhile.

Dad, who has spent more Halloweens than he would probably care to count coaxing whiny, footsore children to walk the last 100 yards to the house, proposed a solution that had

worked with Oldest Younger Brother and me in the past: a wagon.

And so, Youngest Brother and Younger Sister would be bundled into the wagon with a blanket and their little plastic pumpkins, and Dad would pull them around the cul-de-sac and up and down as many driveways as possible in the two hours allotted for trick-or-treating.

This worked quite well (at least from Youngest Brother and Younger Sister’s perspective) until they outgrew the wagon. After the first year of trick-or-treating in our neighborhood under their own locomotive power, they began exploring other options.

Even with these other options, however, I have yet to see either Youngest Brother or Younger Sister leave the house with a pillow case. They come back with fuller pumpkins, true enough, but I have yet to see a broken handle.

There is one aspect of the trick-or-treating experience that was the same in both our upstate New York subdivision and our small town New Hampshire cul-de-sac. When you put together your costume, you should always take into consideration the heavy winter coat you’ll inevitably wear over it.

One Halloween, I attempted to dress up as an angel. The long white robe was thin enough that I could layer it over leggings and a turtleneck without it creating uncomfortable bulk under my parka.

The wings and the halo posed a bit of a problem. The wings wouldn’t fit under my parka and they looked rather silly (and restricted movement considerably) when tied on over it. Wearing a halo and a winter hat (which my parents insisted upon) was also quite challenging. The winter hat ultimately won out.

After spending the evening explaining my costume at every house we visited (“I’m an angel, but my wings don’t fit under my coat and the halo won’t fit over my hat.”), I resolved to choose my costumes more carefully in the future.

Oldest Younger Brother was more successful. His ninja and astronaut costumes (which he wore several Halloweens) did an excellent job of keeping his face warm.

Youngest Brother and Younger Sister have also favored warmer costumes. They began their trick-or-treating days in furry one-piece bat costumes and this year were a spy and a train conductor, respectively.

This year, of course, since New England weather is notoriously unpredictable, it ended up being 70 degrees outside while they were trick-or-treating. One of their friends took advantage of this and dressed up as a tropical tourist.

In the end, though, Youngest Brother and Younger Sister always have a happy Halloween, whether they come home sweltering from wearing too many layers or shivering from not wearing enough. We always have enough candy left over to pad out the most meager haul, as well as erase any bad memories of uncooperative weather.

Tete a Tete runs every other week. Teresa Santoski can be reached at tsantoski@nashua telegraph.com.