Hunter's Moon

Just in time for Halloween, an online article came out the other day on old-fashioned candies that are becoming hard to find. I read it with interest. I remembered most of the items on the list, and many of them were things that always ended up in my trick or treat bag. Necco wafers! Sixlets! Tootsie Rolls! Ah, the ghosts of Halloween past!

A couple of years ago, I was taking an evening stroll on Halloween while trick or treating was underway. It was fun seeing the neighborhood kids in their costumes being shepherded up and down the street, but it struck me as being more orchestrated than my own Halloweens were (or seemed to be). These children were all accompanied by adults, aside from the fact that it wasn't even dark yet, and it didn't seem they would bring home much of a haul at the funereal rate they were going.

This sounds like one of those "When I was your age, I walked five miles in the snow to school" stories. "When I was their age, I ripped through the neighborhood, like all the other kids, with nary but a sibling and would have been insulted if you'd suggested I get home before dark. You would see other kids, but it was understood that they would go their way, and you'd go yours. Each group operated independently." I guess things are different now . . . or perhaps it just seemed later, darker, and more adult-free than it actually was. (Now that you mention it, wasn't that my Dad in the car, following at a discreet distance?)

Forget Samhain. The campy, jokey aspect of Halloween appealed perfectly to my sense of an enjoyable spookiness: like The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, it was silly-scary. The pleasure of being out after dark, wearing a costume, was thrilling precisely because it was understood that for just this one night, ordinary life was somewhat (but not too much) in suspension. What a sense of freedom, to be larking around, with that autumnal feeling in the air (even in South Florida, an October night is entirely different than a June night), passing nothing but the importunate princess, pirate, or ghost that imperfectly disguised another neighborhood kid (and an adult or two in tow, though they somehow seemed to fade into the background).

And then, to ring doorbell after doorbell and have the people within each candlelit house load your bag with candy! -- the object of the whole evening being to end up with a trove you'd be eating for two weeks. Once the thrill of the hunt was over, you had something to show for it. Never mind that there would always be duds. You could trade these off, or at least wait until you'd eaten all the good candy, by which time any undesirables would start to taste better. I can still remember my personal pecking order: chocolates, candy bars, caramels at the top, licorice and unidentifiable taffy at the bottom.

When I was out walking earlier this evening, enjoying the combination of a glowing sunset and a rising Hunter's Moon, I had a fleeting sense of that autumnal excitement of years ago. I know a lot of adults love to celebrate Halloween, but for me, much of the thrill is gone, a joy I left behind when I graduated to trick or treating for UNICEF and then becoming too old to trick or treat at all. I've been to Halloween luncheons and costume parties with pumpkin-shaped cookies and apple cider, but they don't hold a candle to a childhood Halloween, being rather tame affairs in comparison.

That's all right. Every once in a while, like tonight, a yellow moon, combined with a certain briskness in the air and a fading orange twilight, brings with it a faint echo of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," the smell of a plastic mask, and the taste of candy corn. There's a lot of enjoyment in just remembering.