Well, Halloween is on the horizon and apparently there won’t be any ‘Trick or Treating’ in Shepherdstown in 2020. Of course, everything is screwed up, different, or just plain canceled this year.
Anyhow, that got me to thinking about Halloween and trick or treating… It seems like for a lot of years, trick or treat has only meant “treat.” Whatever happened to the “trick” part? When I was a kid, the idea was that when you said, “trick or treat” the person was supposed to give you a treat, or you’d play a trick on them.
I don’t think my kids, and certainly not my grandkids, ever thought of ‘trick or treat’ in those terms. I remember Halloween being a day (mostly night) to “play tricks.” It was kind of like the one day (or night) in the year when it was ok to get into some mischief. In fact, we were probably masterminds of mischief.
Admittedly, some of our “tricks” got a little out of hand on occasion but I don’t remember anyone ever getting hurt or causing any serious damage. One of the most popular “must do” Halloween tricks was to turn over people’s outhouses — I don’t think any of them were anchored to the ground and they were easy to just push over. It was certainly annoying, but they were pretty easy to sit back up and if your outhouse didn’t get turned over, you were surprised and probably wondered, “why not?” I remember some of the more common pranks that were pulled almost every Halloween included, tying doorknobs together or to something to keep the door from opening, soaping car (and downtown store) windows, taking rocking chairs from front porches and putting them on the roof, and letting pigs or chickens out of their pens, or stringing toilet paper over someone’s lawn and trees, and maybe occasionally letting the air out of tires.
When I grew up, obviously I lived in a small community and essentially knew everyone in town. Often, it was the local grouch, or two, who was the brunt of most of the kids Halloween mischief. Usually, the kids would cause trouble and the adults would just smile guiltily to themselves, and were probably mostly amused by the shenanigans.
But the world has changed from when I was a kid — more and more people moved into crowded urban centers, full of big city problems like poverty, segregation and unemployment…. and pranking took on a new edge, becoming more destructive and moe related to vandalism.
As homeowners grew less patient, the risks for pranksters grew to include arrest or in some instances, even being shot. Communities initiated curfews, age limits for trick-or-treating, and intensified police patrols.
I guess today “tricks” still happen, but not regularly as I remember. The average child collecting candy on Halloween night doesn’t understand the meaning of the phrase “ trick or treat” anymore. I guess that’s not a bad thing — it’s probably a good thing.
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