It's a trick-or-treater Charlie Brown!

A few decades ago a little boy named Linus van Pelt sat in a pumpkin patch waiting in vain for the return of the Great Pumpkin (gotta love Wikipedia). Nowadays he might as well sit on his front stoop waiting for the trick-or-treaters. With the two hour "official" time almost at an end we've had only one lonely costumer come to our door. We ourselves went up and down the street (the last showing of the butterfly outfits) but only one in three houses opened their doors. Curiously, the most Halloween-decorated houses on the street were empty. Only one house with kids opened the door--it was grandma, who said her daughter had taken the granddaughter across town to a busy trick-or-treat street.

I used to live on Windsor Avenue, one of West Philly's best trick-or-treat streets, a magnet that drew ghosts, goblins and ballerinas from across that part of the city. It was a lot of fun. Over the years I developed a routine where I'd play a helpless victim on a spider web stretched with string across the back of the porch. I'd moan, "candy candy, give me some candy so I can go free." Eventually some brave little kid would inch up and give me candy, whereupon I'd scream "I'm free, now I can steal your candy, hahaha!" Little kid screams raised in alarm as I lunged at them. I often kept the candy and once counted over thirty pieces in my pockets by night's end! That was a lot of showings for the "candy!" routine, at at least one family of Ethiopian kids would yell out "Candy Man!! Candy Man!!" year-round whenever they'd see me.

When I moved to Jersey I decided I wanted to make this my home and that one way I'd do this is by celebrating Halloween here. A few of the people on my current, way-too-quiet street told me that this street used to be busy on Halloween night and I've heard enough anecdotal stories to think this is just how Halloween has evolved over the last few decades: carnivalesque magnet streets surrounded by miles of dark porch lights. It's kind of a shame, as this is really the only night of the year where I have a good reason to go up to my neighbor's doors and chat a few moments with them. Trick-or-treating is such an iconic small town American tradition and it's death is just another indicator of the way in which geographic locality has been replaced, for better or worse.