Happy Halloween!

I used to love this day! Not so much for the candies, we had a store so I had access to candy all the time, but the getting dressed part! I enjoyed that, but I think not as much as my mother did. She loved to dress me up. It was never intricate costumes, but simple ones done with things we had. I hated wearing a mask; I couldn’t see a thing with it on. My mother always came with me. She never wore a costume but she would walk the neighbourhood with me. Sometime we would venture further out. We knew that some areas of town were more incline to give, but we would always stay close by. We would walk for hours.

In Montreal, in the residential areas, the older part of town, we have lots of stairs. And as luck would have it, the people who would give, were always the people on the top floor.
My mother would wait for me at the bottom of the stairs (ground level) and I would go up. I remember how clumsy I felt in my costume, with my mask on, not seeing the steps that well. Let’s not forget that most of the time; it is cold on Halloween’s night. That meant, that my costume had to be big enough to go over my snowsuit some year, or at least my winter jacket. I felt like the Marshmallow man in “Ghostbusters”! I walked like him and was just as mobile! So, making it to the top of the stairs was one thing, but often that door was home to two apartments, one of which was on the third floor! I remember sweating bullets, but feeling so happy because I would have a pillowcase full of candies. And those candies were way better than the ones we had at the store!

We always gave good stuff at the store, either a bag of chips or a big candy bar. The amount of kids that would show was crazy. Once I was done “collecting my own candies” I would come to the store and watched. It was fun to see all those faces and trying to figure out which kid I knew, plus my father was a bit scared of masked kids, especially when they were tall. If they were tall and acted “older” they wouldn’t give them candies. My dad would tell them they were too old and sent them off, empty-handed. And we would only give at night! If some showed up before dinner, they were turned back. For my dad, Halloween was a night thing, for kids. It was all about being scared and scary!

That's what it's all about for me, so this year, I might be doing this...

Happy Trick or Treating!!

___
Image: Staircase & Marshmallow Man