For kids, Halloween was the top holiday next to Christmas. It’s almost hard to choose the best part when I was a kid because so many aspects were exciting.
First was picking a costume. Most of the time my brother and I put something together. Mom would sew something simple if we needed it, like when my brother was Mighty Mouse and wore tights, his underwear (dyed), a t-shirt and the home-made cape. Years later, she made a cape so my son could be Super Man. Underoos eliminated the need for dying underwear.
The second great part was trick-or-treating. I lived in the neighborhood around the Youth Center, which was first a hospital and later known as the Thomen Center. The streets were full of children. I think a lot of the “country kids” came into town for the night. It was exciting. We were allowed to go in a group, without parents, by the time we were 7 or 8 years old. But then, we walked or rode our bikes to school when we were 6 and 7. Now they’d call us “free range children.”
But perhaps the greatest part was what I will call “the dump.” And get your mind out of the toilet. “The dump” was when you arrived home tired, but full of adrenaline, and dumped the contents of your giant sack onto the living room floor. What joy to go through and look at the candy.
Snack size bars of the popular chocolate candies like Snickers or Pay Day hadn’t come out during my trick-or-treat years from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s. Hershey’s had bags of the miniature bars and Kisses. And you’d get a few of those, but we didn’t get much premium chocolate. Sometimes someone would hand out whole Hershey bars or a whole bag of M&Ms (each cost a nickel back then). Word would spread quickly on the street and a trick-or-treater might skip a few houses on one street and make a run to that house before the bars were all gone.
Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars were made Curtiss Candy Co. Curtiss made smaller bars or maybe they were cheaper because I remember getting them in the loot.
Most of the candy was the cheaper varieties, maybe because of the number of kids out, but maybe because our parents grew up in the Great Depression and didn’t spend too much money on candy to give to strangers.
I also guess a lot of the candy we received was given because it was individually wrapped, though I can remember every year getting some loose, unwrapped candy like circus peanuts sticking together. I never ate it. Also, you’d always get a couple of homemade popcorn balls and maybe an apple.
Kraft caramels were always in the bag and I liked those, along with the caramel creams. Chiclets were packaged in little boxes with two pieces and those would be among the loot. Some people took the individual wrapped sticks of gum out of Juicy Fruit or Double Mint and gave a stick or two to each kid. Of course I got bubble gum, Fleer and Double Bubble. Tootsie Rolls were also in the bag, including the big Tootsie Roll with several bites in it. Tootsie Roll Pops (I left the ‘roll’ in the name) were popular.
People also got the assortment of Brach’s candies from the grocery store. I think I was the only kid around who liked the coconut Neapolitan ones and I’d trade for those. The Brach’s treats would include caramels, the caramel and cream rolls plus hard candies. Lik-M-Aid was sour, fruity powder. You’d pour it in the palm of your hand and lick it. It turned your palm red or purple. Pixy Sticks had the same powder but it was in straw to be poured directly onto your tongue. Unfortunately, it was the Pixy Stick that ruined Halloween trick-or-treating in Texas. An 8-year-old boy died after eating a poisoned Pixy Stick in 1974. The investigation proved he was killed by his father to collect insurance and not by a random Halloween treat. His father was executed 10 years later.
More candy from my days included short rolls of Necco Wafers, jaw breakers and the hot Atomic Fireball jawbreakers. Mary Janes, the peanut butter taffy, and little squares of banana-flavored taffy. I forgot the name. I loved Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddy caramel candies. Slo-Poke was caramel on a stick similar to a Sugar Daddy. The wax lips and vampire teeth were fun. The wax was flavored and tasted good for about 10 seconds when you chewed it.
Did you have any favorite candies as a kid? Let me know at backwhen1600@gmail.com
I had been writing about ghost stories. Shani McCabe wrote and said her mother talked about her aunt being killed at the Orange casket company. Her aunt worked at the casket company and the man came there to kill her. He then killed himself. McCabe doesn’t remember the casket company. It was at the end of 16th Street behind Sabine River Ford (the old Wickersham). The casket company stayed in business for decades before closing sometime in the 1980s.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
Social Media