List some things that stick out in your mind from Halloween when you were growing up...

1. Going to a house that had a huge sign on their door that said "IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE...WHAT DID YOU BRING US?" I just remember we didn't know what to make of it and we just ran away! IObvisouly we didn't ring the doorbell and it didn't look like they were handing out candy anytime soon!

2. We went to this house where they invited us in, and the whole family was sitting around the living room in chairs...from the littlest one to Grandmom...about seven or eight of them...And they asked us to do a trick for them...So my best friend and I sang some song from the Partridge Family...Strange!

3. I got "robbed" when I was in sixth grade. I was on roller skates as a roller derby girl...These kids rode past me on bikes and grabbed my pillowcase and rode off. I remember chasing them and ending up behind K-Mart, alone and in the dark. I remember being so scared that I pee'd myself! Not a good night! LOL LOL.

~Lisa

When I was a 4th grader, a man told me that I was too old to be Trick or Treating.

I loved T & T in the dark with the pumpkins lit and going with a group of friends. Our town does it on Sunday afternoon in the daylight. It's not the same!

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Donna

The town I grew up in had about 500 people so my cousins and I would hit the whole town. Back then you got FULL size candy bars My grandma lived in town and we would go there after and dump out our candy and trade.

What a creep. I'm sorry that happened to you.

One that sticks out in my mind is a group of us went out TOTing. We must have hit every single home in our housing developement and came home with huge bags of candy. It was just a great feeling, being out with everyone else at Halloween. Lots of fun.

Another memory is the plastic costumes with the plastic faces and that rubber string that attaches it to your face and how difficult it was to breathe through it. yick

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I grew up in a area of about 500 people we would run the whole area alone me & about 3 friends from the time I was pretty small. One elderly couple & I mean like 100 grew tons of apple trees the man would hand them out for halloween in a sack with a note for our parents LOL I sure do miss him they died when I was about 17. Then on that same street was a group of elderly women who lived in a house together & they would invite us in & we would go in the kitchen or whatever so everyone could see our costumes LOL oh ya & just remembered they would be baking cookies & then we would all get one. Also remember one of my first halloweens my brother & sis were much older they taught me to say trick or treat smell feet give me something good to eat so I said it at the very very first house my brother & sis about died of embarassment!!!

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mom of 3 greats girls

my uncle sneaking into my bag and taking the good stuff!

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We grew up in a small town of about 200 people. We would walk the streets and my parents would follow us in the car. We went up to this one house and had just rang the doorbell when these two teenage boys ran out from one side of the house screaming - they were dressed up as ghosts - scared the daylights out of us - we would not walk back up to that house for anything. I scared me so bad then, but now I think it's the funniest thing!

Lisa

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"It's not having what you want,
It's wanting what you've got"

I remember heading out the door with no parents. I was probably 8/9 which would have made my little sister 5/6. We just went around the neighborhood with other kids. Boy, seems like that must have been 100 years ago considering how things are these days.

The neighborhood I live in now is where I grew up from 13 on. I was done with trick or treating by the time we moved into this neighborhood. I happened to buy a house that is about 6 blocks from my parents and at one time it was like the scary house that no kids ventured too. The cedar shrubs had been allowed to grown to massive heights and stretched out into the street and over the driveway with a little space to drive the car through. My dh and I got married on Halloween so we do decorate and some stuff is a bit spooky but the kids now like coming to our house because it is decorated and we always have good candy!

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TLJ ~ Women United in Spirit

I remember when I was a child going TOT'ing w/o my Mother, sometimes it was just me or if my brother wasn't being a butt him too. There was this one house where the man always sat on his pouch he was the meanest man I have even known. all the kids were too scared to go there. He use to sit out there when we walked home form school and YELL GET OFF MY SIDEWALK YOU LITTLE ASSES , So we never bothered to go to his home LOL. We also had one time someone that gave out candy apples (Homemade) YUMMY !! I also remember getting homemade cookies and brownies. Sometimes people had drinks outside for the kids to enjoy. we really never got the *Good candy* * cost way too much when I was a kids for people to buy*, But when we did hit the mother load, OMG it was like Christmas in Oct, LOL./ But the one thing I will always keep dear with me is my Grandfather,. every year he would count the kids that came to his house, he grouped them, Example, XX amount that were angles, xx amount that were devils, how many boys , how many girls, how many babies, the list went on and on. He LOVED doing that. Halloween was always so much fun when I was a child.

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MyCoupons Is #1 for Holiday Shopping

ha, I remember being about 5 and I had one of those longish plastic pumpkins......the pumpkin got full, so we headed back home, and I remember thinking WOW, this thing is HUGE..........!!!

I remember the cold, cold, cold Halloween nights.

The costumes my Mom made for me. She's a great seamstress....one year I was a furry doggy, full head dress and all. I was a colonial lady. The best one was Alf.

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Doing the right thing isn't always the same as doing the easy thing.

I remember my holloween costume coming in a box with a cellophane window. The costume came with a plastic/vinyl mask that had small slits for your eyes, two small nostril holes and a slit for your mouth.
I remember getting wax teeth/lips.
Having so much candy, it would last for weeks.
I remember racing home from school and putting on my costume then meeting up with my friends.

ROFL, ALF ! Now that sure brings back memories for me I LOVED watchign Alf. Bet that was a cute costume.
I remember the plastic costume also, my Mother worked for a place called Kresses, She also got us a costume from there. I was on ebay not too long ago and I saw one from the 70's I came very close to buying it just to show my kids what we use to wear as kids.

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MyCoupons Is #1 for Holiday Shopping

Oh man...I remember my mom going thru my candy bag searching for razer blades...that was the thing to put in candy back then. We went once to xray our candy LOL..good ol' southern CA We would blanket the neighborhood....old ladies would give us homemade things we had to throw out, the local dentists gave us toothbrushes and dad got to eat everything with coconut LOL

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

I was just asking my dh if he remembered getting his costume in a box. I also loved those way lips. I could make mine last for a long time. I was born in 1958 and during my early years of TOT there was never many candy bars given out. I wonder if they had little candy bars back then or did they just cost too much?

I remember the houses that they would ask you in and have a table with 3 or 4 bowls and you could pick one candy from each bowl.

When my mom would let me go out with my friend by ourselves I would eat the homemade things before I got home because my mom would have made me throw them away.

I loved Halloween as a kid, and still enjoy it.

Where I grew up, houses were few and far inbetween so Mom or Dad would have to pack all six of us in the station wagon and off we would go. I remember going to this one particular house, the couple was older, but with no children and every year they would give each of us a silver dollar in our bucket/bag. Another Grandma type would bake fresh cookies and make candied apples to give us. We may not have stopped at alot of places, but because it was in the country, not many would take even get TOT'ers, so when someone stopped in, they gave you a mother-lode of goodies. We always came home with our buckets/bags full every year.

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"Why must you speak, when you have nothing to say." Horatio Hornblower

Yep, that's the one!
Memories...lol

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Real eyes...realize...real lies.

OK picture it.....It's late October in Michigan and I am probably 6 years old. Snowsuit on under costume. A group of us go up on a small cement porch that has no railing around it. It does however have very precisely trimmed hedges all around. One of the big kids stepped back and I got pushed off the porch and landed on my back on top of the hedges. I guess I looked a lot like the Michelin Man flailing around trying to get down. It didn't help that no one could stop laughing long enough to give me a hand. My older sister reminds me of this one every year at Halloween.

I also remember my Dad being in his glory because he loved black licorice and none of his girls did so he got enough to last a while.

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Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass
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That's too funny, cashchik. Vaguely reminiscient of the snowsuit scene from "The Christmas Story".....

cj/

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I was walking home one night and a guy hammering on a roof called me a paranoid little weirdo. In morse code. -Emo Phillips

I think my Mom still has that too.......I think I'll make a phone call and see

I, too, remember the costume in the box......first grade, I was Bull Winkle. I remember the Halloween parades at school, and the kids got dressed up and decorated pumpkins.

No dressing up at school this year....I think that 's sad.

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Doing the right thing isn't always the same as doing the easy thing.

Regarding #2 - Where I grew up doing a trick was a requirement! You didn't get your candy until you sang, told a joke, or did a dance. I can't stand it today when you open the door and the kids are standing there with their bags open - they don't even say "trick or treat" half the time. I told my kids about the "trick" part and they thought I was crazy.

I absolutely despised those plastic masks. You couldn't breathe and your face got really sweaty.

That's just too funny! We live in a warmer climate than I grew up in and I keep telling my kids how lucky they are that they don't have to wear their winter coat under (or over) their costume.


Thanks OP for starting this thread - it really brought back some memories.

Oh my! LOL...

When we got home, my parents would make us dump it all out on the table while they checked through it to make sure it was safe. My Dad would always steal all of our milky ways because they were his favorite. Finally got to where we just pulled them out and gave them to him to save time.

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Mom to Katie 1/95 and Sara 5/97

We had a neighbor that would let us reach in the penny jar and we got as many pennies as our little hand could hold. There was always a neighbor or two who handed out the religious pamphlets and the grandmotherly types who would give popcorn balls.

Rebecca

Wow, everyone has such great Halloween memories...the only thing I have was being allowed to dress for school one day, then at the end of the day after getting dropped off at the bus stop a neighbor boy and I walking the last couple blocks to our house and having a man try and lure us into is car with candy and money.....I was probably 6 or 7. My parents didn't beleive in Trick or Treating and that was one of only 2 years that I was allowed to dress up.......

Guess that's why I go all out for the kids on Halloween!

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"You can never really pay back. You can only pay forward."

Wayne Woodrow “Woody” Hayes

O-H-I-O

I was 7 (wonder woman) and walking home with my hull when it started raining, I started to run to run home to get out of the rain. I then tripped in a pothole and twisted my ankle. Some guy ( who I didn't know)drove by a few minutes later and helped me up, I was crying and in so much pain, he then gave me a ride home...Now as an adult I know I was lucky he drove me home. The weird thing is my Mom wasn't freaked out that I drove home with a stranger she was more worried about my sprained ankle and the deep scrapes on my knees. How times have changed!

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Struttin' our stuff for everyone.
We're not here to start no trouble.
We're just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle.

In our younger days we would TOT our neighborhood and then head across town to Grandma's and TOT her neioghborhood. And it didn't matter that we were a few minutes after the cut off time we still got candy.

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Laura
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Yes, that was definitely a different time.

Something I noticed in this thread too, is that it seems a lot of "young" kids went w/out their parents. I guess "back in the day" you could do that, since you pretty much knew everyone in your neighborhood.

Oh, some of these memories are too funny.....sorry, CashChik, I was actually LOL about yours....I could picture it, that's for sure.

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Doing the right thing isn't always the same as doing the easy thing.

hehehe yeah was thinking the same, thoguh i rented the whole series awhile back from blockbuster and my boys watched every episode :-)

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Hi...it's the first time I've been on today...I'm enjoying reading everyone's responses....I also remember the costumes that came in the boxes with the plastic masks, my Mom checking our candy for razor blades, and going all over the town without any parents with us! I also remember how cold and windy it usually was (southern NJ)...fun times for sure. ~Lisa