Everyone was under strict lockdown until dusk. Anyone seen out trick or treating prior to imminent darkness was vehemently "booooooooooed". Everyone clung to their screen doors like house flies, waiting for that moment when all the kids were set loose. Minutes seemed like days.

Halloween Day was probably the best school day of the year. Still riding high waves off the previous Devil's Night activities, we spent all day in our various classes, eating candy and playing little pranks.

Many kids had home-made costumes, as previously mentioned. Others had those Kresge's and Woolworth's get-ups. Mine, in this year, was a plastic skull mask with a rapier sticking out of its head. Those plastic masks were torture, beads of sweat collecting all up under my nose and lips, had to flip it up every ten minutes just to get some fresh, cool air.

Once it was deemed OK to go outside, within five minutes time there'd be 100 kids out, running all around, shouting, laughing, gathering in groups and hittin the streets for some free goodies.

Seeing as Halloween was kinda "curfew free", a handful would actually remain out and about until 10:00, even later, snatching up treats from those few houses that kept their Pumkeens alit. Me? Hell, by the time 9:00 rolled around, I was beat! Then it was time for the "piece count", where you actually counted every piece of candy. Chip bags really didn't count and ended up on top of the fridge for general snacking. My "count" would be between three and four hundred, on a good night.

By Christmas, the only piece of candy left in the bounty would be, say, a Pineapple-flavoured Dum Dum sucker. Bottle Caps were of high value and could be traded for three Reese's and a Mounds bar.