Here are my Real New Yorker remembrances of Halloweens past. Add yours in the comments section and have fun tonight:
— Going to Fordham Road to buy crappy machine made costumes, then getting home to doctor them up: more blood! (Ketchup) More eye darkening! (Burned corks fished out of the garbage) More designer detail! (Dad’s old crushed fedora)
— Meeting on the top floor of our tired old Bronx apartment house and working our way down, clambering down the steps and bang bang banging on doors!
— Once finished, we’d head across the street to Fordham Hill Apartments, THE MOTHERLODE! Many buildings! Many apartments!
— Coming home with two (or more) filled shopping bags filled with candy and coins (yeah, folks put pennies, nickels and even dimes in the loot bags) and eating ourselves sick!
— Picking out the candy corn (thrown loose and unwrapped into our bags), hard candy, and raisins and giving them to our little siblings (hey, what did they know, right?)
— Falling asleep in a pile of candy wrappers, floating in a sugar high.
We dressed as ghosts. “Bums.” Pirates. Cowboys. Indians. Devils.
Favorite candy? Mounds. Almond Joy. Nestle’s Crunch. Chocolate covered mints.
Worst? Candy corn.
Worst of all? Apples and raisins. I mean, we were junk-food loving kids; what were they thinking?
Worst experience? As a little kid in a group of similar mopes, getting egged by the “big kids” from Devoe Park.
OK, your turn? Add your kid-Halloween memories below! BOO!!!!!
We never left the building — 48 doors to knock, and weather wasn’t a factor in our costume decisions. No fortune-teller-ensemble-under-a-parka for us!