Halloween Candy

When I was a kid we lived in track housing. A kazillion ticky tacky little houses and they all looked just the same. I think there were probably about 25 or so plus houses on each cul-de-sac and then somehow the builders who covered over the dairy farm managed to link about 5 successive tracks all together in my immediate neighborhood.

Talk about the way to score when you went trick or treating...oh my. I can recall coming home with so much candy. The pillow case I carried was more than half full. That's a whole lotta loot when your not even four feet tall. I can remember one year I had the hair brained idea to go on rollerskates. You know, the more ground covered, the more door bells rung, the bigger the amount of CANDY!

When I arrived home I can remember my parents letting me pour it all out onto the living room floor (okay, gross now when I think about that since it was covered avocado green shag carpet) and sifting through it. You know the categories, the good stuff (tootsie rolls, gum, jolly ranchers), the great stuff (Butterfingers, Mr. Goodbar, anything chocolate), and then the crap stuff. Funny, I had such a sweet tooth I can't recall thinking any of it was crap but I know I did pawn some stuff off for trade or I tossed it because I didn't like it. I can still see the respective heaps of candy we would have at the end of the night. Once sorted, the stuff deemed edible was put into a silly plastic pumpkin a set atop the fridge. This was meant as a means of control. Ha, good luck with that. My parents slept soundly and I was stealth like a thief in the kitchen back then. We were usually rationed down to one or two pieces a day but I wonder if my mom every actually figured out why the candy did not manage to last until mid-December.

Truly, it is amazing my teeth managed to stay in at all when I think of the amount of candy I consumed between Halloween and Valentines Day. Thank goodness for a mom who made sure I brushed my teeth!