in their house, no parents, until they guessed who you were.

And, several blocks away there was a nail plant. That's where my F-i-L worked.
There were 3 even bigger employers in town though, so I don't think we'd call it a steel town.
Industrial town? Absolutely. White collar, it was not.

subdivision we lived in. The driveway was very dark, long and scary. The owner was my Girl Scout leader. Her daughter and I were the same age and good friends.

If you were brave enough to walk the road to the house, you were treated in the farm house kitchen to hot cider, homemade cookies and a treat bag full of candy 🙂.

Twelve of us trick or treated together (my two best friends and our younger siblings). Safety in numbers 😀.

Hot cider & cookies. That's a nice touch.

rainy Halloween night in western PA .

in England when I was very small they tried to teach us Yanks about American holidays - I understood July 4 and Thanksgiving but Halloween completely mystified me - pumpkins with ugly faces carved in them? Green women on broomsticks? I liked the black cats though,

...figure anything out. I just dug the free candy!

but according to my English half-brother, it is now!

One house gave out king sized candy bars. Usually it was Snickers or a Hershey bar.


Another house gave out soda in a can.


Then there was a house that gave out homemade cookies with their address printed on the sandwich bags that the cookies were packaged in.


Normally we purchase fun sized M&M's, Twix and Kit Kats and let the trick or treaters choose 2 to 3 treats out of the bowl. Last year, we did something different and purchased Rice Krispies in individual wrapped snack sizes.

I have a neighbor across the street that's been handing out king sized candy bars for years and another neighbor kitty corner that hands out individual bags of snack chips such as Corn Chips, Cheeto's, Dorito's and regular Lays potato chips.


We hardly get any trick or treaters because we don't have many families with young children on our street. The competition is about a block away from us with a newer and more expensive housing addition that gets 200 plus trick or treaters.

We give 2 or 3 of the snack size candy bars & a bag of chips.
We but the Lay's Flavor Bundle, so there's a couple flavors of Doritos,BBQ potato chips, Funyuns, etc.
We like what gets left over that way.
Fun story: my wife bought a Hershey mix. One Halloween a few years back, 2 young boys came. I told them to grab 3 each & I gave them chips. As they were getting done, one of the boys said "Oh, there's where chocolate. Can I have that? I'll put the other ones back." Because he offered to give back, I told him to grab 2 white chocolate and keep what he already got. Then, I told the other kid to grab 2 more because I didn't want one to get 5, the other 3.
I thought it was so cool that kid was willing to dig into his bag to give the other candy back. His dad was there, and I complimented him on his son's manners.

I think I'm going to purchase the Lay's variety pack this year and possibly some king sized candy bars. I'll let them choose 1 chip bag and 1 king sized bar.


I'm not going overboard since our average is under 10 trick or treaters.


I love seeing the youngsters with excellent manners.

than if we went around our apt building!

My mother hated to be seen as 'cheap' on Halloween, even as we were not even middle class. But, she would buy a few bags of things here and there to have a decent enough stock ready for the 31st. My brother and I were a bit bothered by the fact that we never got to get any of our own stash of candy because that was for 'trick or treat!'. And, it was usually some of the best treats.

(Mother and I both loved the venom outta some Tootsie Rolls and so she always got them and I could never get any. She never opened them before the 31st, so there was no way to grab one. She would know.)