Halloween circa 1975

Halloween is sneaking up on us and it sure doesn’t feel like October here in Utah. Yesterday I saw a sign that read 78 degrees! There have been many years here that we have snow by now. Not that I’m complaining…I don’t like being cold.

You all know that I grew up in a small town in central Utah. My brother who was just two years older and I liked to trick-or-treat together. The problem with these small towns is that the houses are not all that close together. So one year we devised a brilliant beyond brilliant plan. We would take our bikes to go trick-or-treating! That way we just might be able to get to the entire town before we had to head home.


We were so excited! We planned our costumes so they wouldn’t get caught in our bike chains and we discussed at length how we would balance our plastic pumpkins on our handlebars to carry all that loot we planned to collect. The plan was foolproof!

We headed out around 5:00, since Mom wouldn’t let us leave any earlier. We sailed along, dragging our bikes right up on the porch with us. (In hindsight, it’s amazing our neighbors put up with that.) It was a little tricky carrying our caramel apples from the lady a couple of doors down, but we managed. We covered the west half of town in about half the time it normally took and then we started strategizing the best places to go next.


Unfortunately, there were a couple of things we didn’t plan for. The first was the fact that we were going to get tired! It was only about 7:00 and my legs were already burning. The second thing was the rain. We were clear up on the east side of town when it started sprinkling.

By the time we raced back to our street, we were totally drenched and so was our candy. Some things were recoverable, but the Smarties were wet and beginning to dissolve. Most of the Tootsie Rolls had turned into a gooey mess. It was a sad end to a happy day.