Mrs. Beasley made me cringe

Halloween is right around the corner, and you know what that means...I'll be hitting CVS on Monday morning to buy bags of "fun-size" Three Musketeer bars at half-price. Ahh...I love me some Three Musketeers, especially when they’ve been stored in the freezer.

Growing up, my sisters and I would dress up on Halloween and hit the houses along East Main Street in Victor, NY. And like millions of other kids across America, we'd come home and dump the loot from our orange plastic pumpkins onto the floor and start pawing through, looking for our favorite sweets. Those homemade caramel popcorn balls? Sorry - right into the trash. And apples? Boring - hello applesauce! I'd make a big pile of the best stuff (anything chocolate, fireballs, and Pixie Stix) and hand those nasty Mary Janes and NECCO wafers over to my dad.

For several years running, my Halloween costume was a "hobo": tattered clothes, dirt smudges on my face, and a big plastic cigar (??) in my mouth. Isn't it odd that I don't remember any other costumes? One year, my younger sister wore a Mrs. Beasley mask - remember Buffy's doll from "Family Affair"? To this day, I remember being freaked out by that mask - something about the way my sister's eyes would move behind those slits in the plastic. And then she’d stick her tongue out through the mouth slit. Evil Mrs. Beasley!

When we lived in Boston’s South End, we’d get kids by the hundreds on Halloween night. One year, we had to skedaddle inside after giving candy to 500 kids – and realizing that the pot was empty as another mob of ghouls and goblins rushed up the street. We always made a night of it, sitting on the stoop with neighbors, eating homemade soup (usually shrimp and corn chowder – I’ll be posting that recipe soon), and sharing some beer or wine. Now we live on the third floor of a condo building in South Boston, so there’s no trick-or-treaters. Last year, we packed up some wine and visited friends in the South End and had a ball watching all of the kids and their parents make the rounds.

So a few Halloween-related questions: 

• What was the best costume you ever wore as a kid?
• What was your favorite kind of candy to get on Halloween?
• Do you get trick-or-treaters at your house on Halloween?