Trick or Treat
When I was young, I always began Halloween with aspirations to fill my entire pillowcase with candy. We lived in a neighborhood simply crammed with streets, with houses upon houses, all set close to one another, almost all of them, really every one, with a bright light on, signifying yes, this house was participating in Halloween. You could knock on a stranger's door and take the Three Musketeers bar, or the Tootsie Roll, or the Lifesavers, and it was okay. Unlike all the other times in the seventies, when a stranger offering you candy signified danger. Which is not to say that strangers with candy are any less dangerous, but for many of us, we mitigate the risks for our children with our presence. In my seventies, we children were often alone, walking to school alone, walking to the playground alone, biking to the pool, coming home from Girl Scouts, trick-or-treating with friends--alone. Our mothers worked or didn't work, but we weren't chauffeured to activities, we