We'll be watching for goblins

It took several years after we moved into our neighborhood for my wife and I to realize why no trick-or-treaters come to our door on Halloween.

It's demographics.

Look at our neighborhood. It's mostly homes built in the 1950s with large shade trees. A few of the houses are occupied by their original owners. Many of the newer residents, like us, are old enough to be grandparents.

After the first couple of years of having to eat all that leftover chocolate -- hey, somebody had to do it -- we gave up. We became what would have been known in my favorite hometown in the Ozarks as Halloween grumps. We don't turn on the front-porch light on Halloween. We close the shades on windows facing the street. We sit in rooms farthest from the front of the house.

In my favorite hometown, folks like us would have been targeted by gangs of youngsters wearing paper sacks or old nylons over their heads. These up-to-no-good youths would have been armed, too -- with bars of soap.

That was a long time ago. I haven't seen a soaped window on Halloween for years and years. I would certainly hate to see this particular form of "trick" revived for any reason.

It is an unfortunate sign of our times that many parents no longer feel their children are safe to go trick-or-treating on Halloween. Many of those who let their children go out inspect the "treats" with care, looking for anything that might harm an unsuspecting child with a sweet tooth. Remember when hospitals would X-ray bags of treats?

Now many parents opt for safer Halloween activities, especially events organized by churches or other groups. And they go to the mall.

There was no mall when I was growing up. We had Main Street. There was Toney's Rexall Drug Store with its soda fountain. And Luna Hardware where you could watch TV in the big display window. And Gayle's Mercantile, which was the last of the all-purpose general stores. And the liquor store (Quick! Don't even look in!). And the bait and tackle shop. And Western Auto. And the post office and bank and Ben Franklin dime store and the shoe store and the furniture store and the telephone office and Ward's Supermarket and the Baptist, Methodist, Christian and Nazarene churches and Buck Garren's farm equipment place and ... .

They were all there. Most of them are long gone now.

In my day many of the store owners stayed late on Halloween to ward off soap-wielding trick-or-treaters. Never mind that handing out candy was no guarantee that these young marauders wouldn't soap your windows anyway.

That was the thing about Main Street: Just about every storefront had huge plate-glass windows perfect for smearing with Lifebouy. Or Camay.

There were worse things that could be done to a window. Raw eggs come to mind. And there were other targets too. Like band director Joe English's canoe, which sometimes found its way to the roof on his front porch -- on Main Street, naturally -- sometime during the darkness of Halloween.

Mr. English would rail the next day during band about "responsibility" and "maturity" and "making something of yourselves" and "acting like people who wind up in prison."

Some of the band members would hang their heads in shame. We learned a lot in band class. Sometimes we even learned a little bit of music. But young minds, it turns out, are like sieves when the next Halloween rolls around.

Then we got old. And trick-or-treaters stopped coming to our house.

A young family has moved in across the street from us since last Halloween. The yard has had spooky decorations for days. We think we may have at least two trick-or-treaters this year. We'll leave the porch light on.

Who knows. There may even be hope for Main Street.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.