Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full... the goblins are comin’

I’m on my second big bag of Halloween Candy. Hey, give a girl a little room. I didn’t say “in how many years… or months… or weeks. Although it was the second big bag, I’ve bought, which had Halloween characters on the wrapper. Of course, that could have been back in August.

It got me to thinking about shelf life of candy. Of course, we must worry more about chocolate going bad than we do those little hard candies. I had a bag of those that lasted two years. The second year, when I found them in the back of the pantry, they had glued themselves together in solidarity against children. I guess they had found themselves in the bottom of the candy bowl too many times. It seems suckers, Smarties, Skittles, and Twisters get picked long before those hard, fruit flavored squares that have no holiday relationship at all. Those candies just end up being recycled holiday after holiday or are used when people run out of cough drops. “They don’t get no respect,” as the man said.

There is an urban myth which tells of rich people giving full sized chocolate candy bars for Halloween. When I was a kid growing up north of Wichita Falls, the story was that the Burns family gave out such great treats. Several years before that, the Burns family had started putting out light displays in their front yard in the wealthy part of the city. Starting with Santa Clause rocking in his chair, soaking his feet, they added something to their display every year. By the time we drove over on Christmas Eve in about 1956, the display included close to twenty scenes and the line stretched blocks through the neighborhood. It was magic. Someone handed out small candy canes at the end of the tour, and we went home happy. When the display was moved to the grounds of Midwestern State University, I remembered the excitement and was glad they were still sharing it.

However, no one at MSU ever handed out full sized candy bars for Halloween. I don’t know if the Burns family ever handed out full sized candy bars to carloads of kids. No matter how big the bars were or how cheap they were at that time, my mother was having none of it. She was not loading us up to drive through the Country Club section of the city to “beg” a candy bar.

I don’t know that I ever knew anyone who got one of those mythical candy bars. Maybe from their favorite neighbors or their grandparents, but my mother just didn’t buy into it.

We were given our paper sacks and sent out unsupervised throughout the neighborhood wearing our cowboy hats, ghost sheets, bandannas and swords, and plastic masks to Trick or Treat. This started well before dark and lasted until the sack was full or your little sister started to cry.

I’m not sure if they even packaged bite-sized chocolate candy in the popular brands at that time, but there were enough Tootsie Rolls and suckers to make the trip well worth it.

I’ll probably buy another bag of candy before Halloween. I need to get it now. It won’t go on sale before, and it will all be gone afterward. Last year, I got up early on November 1 only to find the shelves empty. Ever since I forgot and had to use the fruit candies from last year, I’ve sworn to give out chocolate candy bars. Not the full-sized ones… I’m not rich… and that was an urban myth.