Halloweens past and present

Halloween is one of the easy-to-celebrate holidays.  A few odds and ends for a costume, a bag for candy, tape up a ghost, a bat and put out a carved pumpkin before dark falls.  We thought it was a fun way to act scary and be scary once a year.  I remember different Halloween experiences growing up.
There were few houses on my block, so my mother often drove us to other neighborhoods and we trick-or-treated as long as we had the energy, from 6pm to about 8:30pm.  Once a friend had a Halloween slumber party, and we played games there after we canvassed the neighborhood.
Later the town began a Halloween parade on Halloween night, and we trick-or-treated the night before.  The parade was lots of fun, high school bands, Shriners and their cars, scary floats, old cars, all on a warm, breezy, October night.  Sometimes it was cold, and I pitied the majorette and letter carriers in their skimpy costumes.
When my children were doing Halloween, we lived in great neighborhoods, and they could just go out the door, meet their friends and take off.  I remember the last time I went out with my youngest.  She was the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio, with cardboard wings I had made for an older sister.  The night was cool, full of leaves cascading from the trees and we scuffed through them on our hour's walk.  She decided what streets to go on and when she'd had enough of trick-or-treating, we went home and she poured out her candy and drooled over it.  Or maybe it was me that drooled.  She was kind and shared with me.  Her brothers came home with pillowcases full.  They would give me the non-chocolate hard candies.
Nowadays, I buy a bag of small candybars, tape up a few old decorations to the front door, and hand out the candy to about 8 trick-or-treaters.  No more long walks with children running through the darkness from door to door, laughing at adults commenting on their costumes, meeting other children and acting scared at their costumes, ecstatic at the amount of candy each one has collected.
I like Halloween, both then and now.