Ever since I was about four or five years old, Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.
A big part of this was contributed by my neighbor’s annual Halloween party. This get together was only with three other families, but that’s what made it extra special, since all the parents were good friends and all of us kids grew up together.
On Halloween night, we would get ready in our costumes, then walk about 15 houses up the street to the Matthews’ house where it all took place. Once we arrived we would eat dinner, which was usually Mrs. Mathews’ famous chilli, to fuel up for our long night of trick-or-treating ahead.
After that, we would get our trick-or-treating bags together and start heading out to walk around the neighborhood on our candy collecting competition. This is where all the kids would try to get the most amount of candy to benefit us later on, when we sorted and traded it around.
Tired from running around for a while, we would take a pit stop at Mrs. Lulu’s house to watch “Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin” on the big blow up screen in her front yard, while we ate popcorn and hot dogs. We all loved Mrs. Lulu so much because she worked at our elementary school and was always so much fun. We did a little more trick or treating and looked at all our neighbors’ front yard decorations, then would start heading back to the Matthews’ house to start trading and sorting all of our treats.
While the adults ate and coversed, all the kids would sit in a big circle in the living room and sort our candy into 3 different categories; chocolate candies, sour candies and fruity ones. Then we would trade around whatever candy we didn’t want.
As the night went on and we started to get tired, we would watch a Halloween movie until whichever family was ready to leave first.
There was one catch though.
Usually, whichever family out of the four left to go back home first, got a special surprise in the morning… a toilet-papered house pulled by all the other families!
This tradition carried on up until the Matthews family moved to Houston in sixth grade. It was really fun while it lasted, and I will never forget it.