Let the Sugar Rush Commence

For those of you with little trick-or-treaters at home, you have my full sympathy as you deal with the after effects of the great candy binge, aka Halloween. We do not get any trick-or-treaters where we are. We’re on a not especially pedestrian-friendly, dark country road where the houses are generally pretty far apart from one another. This is definitely trunk-or-treat territory. That, or the parents drive kids to a nearby town with sidewalks and close together houses so they can have a traditional trick-or-treating experience.

I used to live in Pennsylvania in one such town. The first year I was there, Halloween was cancelled due to Superstorm Sandy and the fact that the power was out. As it happens Halloween had been cancelled the previous year as well also due to a power outage, that one caused by an October snowstorm. So, as my first Halloween in the town approached, I didn’t know what to expect. One neighbor warned me to expect around 800 kids. I assumed he was joking. He might not have been.

Even though my little town didn’t have a large population, the ranks of costumed kids grows on Halloween night as kids from the surrounding rural areas descend upon the town where houses sit one on top of one another and most lack driveways, having been built before the invention of (or at least the widespread adoption of) the automobile. From 6 to 8 p.m. on Halloween night there are a LOT of children roaming the streets of the little borough, perhaps as many as 800 as my neighbor said. When I lived there I was on the busy main road through town, a state highway that was decidedly not exactly pedestrian-friendly. The local volunteer fire department did put up flares and patrolled to try to keep the traffic passing through moving at a slow pace, but with Greyhound Buses and tractor trailers breezing through, some parents skipped the houses on the highway in favor of all the side street homes. So, thankfully I never had 800 trick-or-treaters show up, but easily somewhere between 100 to 200 costumed youngsters. But perhaps my neighbor on the quiet side street did get his anticipated 800 kids.

This advice is a bit late seeing as Halloween is past, but when you’ve moved to a new place, you should put some thought into what you decide to hand out on Halloween as that might be what the local kids will expect to get each year. This was the case for me when I lived up on top of a mountain in the Poconos, where Halloween costumes were often mostly hidden beneath puffy winter jackets. The first year I was there I had picked up some fun size Milky Ways to hand out on Halloween. One day long past Halloween when I was out shoveling some snow some of my younger neighbors passed by on the street, which was when I learned I was the Milky Way house. Good thing I like Milky Ways!

As someone who had done all her trick-or-treating in New Jersey, one thing I found interesting about Pennsylvania is that Halloween has a set schedule. For every town I’ve ever lived in on the PA side of the river Trick-or-Treating was specifically scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. on Halloween night. It’s a far cry from the anarchy of my own childhood, where I can recall racing home from school on Halloween to get out there as soon as possible to start my trick-or-treating and secure the maximum amount of treats. After all the early bird, gets the gummy worms, or something like that!

— Alissa