At 10:57 PM, Friday, October 25, 2002 Star Drifter posted the following:
Halloween in the city.

When I was in grade school, I lived in a suburb of Detroit called Wyandotte. I lived in the southeasternmost neighborhood of this little town, right by where Lawrence DeLisle would later have his accident. (One day, I'll vent about the corrupt cops in Wyandotte, and how they falsified reports after teachers in the city beat grade school kids to the point that they bled. And not on the behind. Then I'll relate it to a man who was locked in a room for 12 hours by the very same officers without food or an attorney before confessing. But anyway, the DeLisle case was national, and the cops had to at least look like good guys.)

So, damnation of the man aside, this was a beautiful time to be a kid at Halloween. The technology was just coming into play in a cheap enough way that smoke machines and black lights could be used in abandon, alongside all manner of non-gimmicky but effective decorations. Candy was safe to eat - but the police would check it out for you in case you didn't trust it. Most importantly, the "big kids" - usually between 21-35 - went out of their way to scare the hell out of trick or treaters.

How sick, right? Bullshit. Look, at this time my dad's record covers still scared me. I still remember the door that opened with no one behind it. I remember looking and wondering if maybe there was a mistake. And I damn well remember some guy in a Freddy Krueger outfit jumping out just when we were at our most confused, scaring us senseless. I mean, when you're eight years old and you walk into a living horror movie, that's a seriously frightening event.

I got my candy. That night I didn't stop to think about much other than that I earned that candy with my screams. But now, probably least fifteen years later, I look back on that with the same kind of nostalgia that our nation's elderly remember their favorite presidents with. Halloween wasn't getting coupons in a well lit mall. It wasn't safe from fear. We walked around in the middle of autumn, shivering in our cheap uninsulated costumes and looking at all the dying plant life. People who knew what they were doing put on elaborate horror shows. Not all of them, but enough.

On top of our candy, those people gave us memories. I don't remember what candy I got. I don't remember what I even dressed as half of those years. But I remember the people who went out of their way to put on a show. Now that halloween is so sanitized and you have to worry about getting sued or arrested for even trying that, I do feel sorry for children. They'll have fewer memories as adults of when times were that good.