Mom's philosophy for Halloween was that anytime you knocked on a neighbor's door and asked for something for free, it constituted begging. For this reason, her steadfast rule was that although we would allow others to beg at our house, going to beg at other people's homes was forbidden. However, forbidden did not always equal that we did not do it. On the contrary, we ALWAYS did it.
The children all walked home from school prior to owning any cars, and this led to the belief that trick-or- treating should start the minute that school was out. No matter what age we were, or which school we attended, Delran High School, Delran Middle School, or Millbridge Elementary School, we began knocking on every door there was, all the way home. For the boys, the trick was to remember to wear a football jersey to school that day so that when asked what we were supposed to be dressed up as at the doors we knocked on, our obvious, but lame answer was, "A football player". It always worked.
The next task was finding clever ways to store the the candy once our pockets were full. For the boys it was easier. We owned Football Jackets with huge hoods that doubled as a candy carrier. Mine was the Miami Dolphins jacket and it had pockets-o-plenty and a hood built like a snow shovel.
The process of trick-or-treating was divided in to two segments: The one we did individually on the way home from school and the calculated cat and mouse game of trick-or-treating once we got home from school, which was way more difficult. The problem was mom tried to keep track of us from leaving the house after school on Halloween. The solution was to cover for one another and misdirect the focus on other things by the siblings who were on watch duty versus the 1-3 children who snuck out the back door and ran to no more than 5 houses in a row and ran right back. The rules were simple. If you cover well enough for those who ran out to collect candy, you got a cut of the prize. If we got caught on your watch, no candy for you.
Mom had a tradition that started out as the neighborhood joke and which turned out to be quite popular with many who returned yearly and often multiple times in the same evening to experience it. Mom was a literalist, which meant in this case, if you wanted a treat, you had to do a trick in order to get it. There were no exceptions, no matter what the age of the children knocking on the door and no matter what time it was. You knock on our door, you come in and sit in the living room with all of her kids watching and performed some sort of trick for your prize. Joke telling, singing, somersaults, and piano playing were all very popular. Always the teacher, if you had no trick or talent, mom would teach you one. You can imagine how embarrassing for you if you are the only one in our home, but eventually we would have 10-20 people waiting for their turns and when they were finished, they would often loiter to watch others perform their trick
This make-shift play house was for years the most embarrassing thing to experience in my life and I cringed when anyone I knew came to my house. However, this offered cover for us to put our trick-or-treating into action. One by one we would slip out through the kitchen to the back door, do our 5 door tour and make it back before the crowd diminished during a lull in activity. Under Monica's bed was usually where the stash ended up before it was time to divvy it up later. Then we would sneak back into the circle like we had never been gone. One of the obstacles was that because we could only go so far to reach new houses in any one direction, we had to put on different costumes depending on the direction we would go out. Although this was time consuming, it paid off in being able to hit the same houses multiple times and make it back without getting caught.
One of the downsides of doing a trick in our house for your treat was that mom's definition of a treat was seldom accepted as a fair trade by those who embarrassed themselves for a week old apple, or other fruit, or oatmeal concoction. The looks on their faces when they realized their fate was classic; us laughing at them for being ridiculous for nothing was priceless, but fodder for payback and payback they did. Our home was peppered with the very treat they had received once they got a safe distance from our home. If the treat was not too damaged, it was recycled for another guest. This absurd cycle would go on for hours and late in to the night.
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