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Edited on Wed Oct-31-07 03:52 PM by Daveparts
Halloween Candy
By David Glenn Cox
What does Halloween candy really mean? For millions of Children it means good times not just the eating the stuff but the thrill of getting it. Coming home and then sorting the good stuff from the chaff. When I was about eleven we had moved into a new neighborhood. I knew most all the kids from school but I was still the new guy.
My mother forgetting about Halloween asked my father to pick up candy on his way home from work. He worked at a factory in an industrial park and on his way home just down the street from the plant was a wholesale candy company. Being a typical dad from the 1960’s he wasn’t involved much in passing out candy to kids. We did it or my mother did it or they went with out.
Not that he was a jerk or anything just the roles at that time dictated that dad bought and you did. Try to imagine Ward Cleaver passing out candy. Any who, dad gets home with the candy and says. “I didn’t know how much to get, so I got three boxes. Snickers, Butterfingers and Baby Ruth.”
My mother asked, “Boxes?”
As he explained about the wholesale candy company my sister and I went to investigate. What we found was nine boxes of candy, three boxes of each but not just the volume of the candy but the size. My dad had purchased nine boxes of the movie sized candy bars. Not the mini’s or the fun sized, why the hell do they call those fun sized? Tiny little candy bars aren’t any fun? But the large truly fun size candy bars, large now that’s fun!
My first thought was to turn off the porch light and dodge Halloween all together after all I wouldn’t score this big on the street. My mother rolled her eyes but she understood that maybe Dad was dumb or maybe he was just playing dumb because he had grown up in the teeth of the great depression and appreciated hard times.
So as I left the house to trick or treat my thoughts were already on leftovers. They couldn’t possibly give all that away could they?
When I reached the next street over, the word was already out. “They’re giving away huge candy bars at that house one from the corner over on Leonard!” It was all over the neighborhood it was the only topic of conversation. Aquentinces from school would ask, “Have you heard about those people giving out the huge candy bars?” I would say, “Yeah, I heard.” But when I mentioned, “Yeah that’s my house” they all answered, “Your parents are so cool!”
But as the candy supply dwindled back at the house my status on the street soared. My family were celebrities, our house was a landmark. Directions would be given, “You know where that house is where the people gave out those huge candy bars on Halloween?”
Of course the answer was always, “Sure, everyone knows where that house is!” When I returned home to the shrine of the giant candy bars I was a legend but only my mother’s prudence had saved us a couple of the candy bars from the chocolate starved thundering heard that had swamped our house. As she told it they never stopped, she barely had a chance to shut the door. My father thought it was funny but my mother’s tiredness tempered his desire to tell us just how actually funny he thought it was.
The next day at school I could do no wrong. Not just in my grade but in all the grades. I was the kid whose parents gave out the huge candy bars. For years it was spoken about and the next year my father did it again. “Saying it would just be such a shame to let all those kids down after last year and anyway I’m buying it wholesale.”
You just can’t forget something like that, when it snowed kids came to the door wanting to shovel the drive. Vandals cut tires on our neighbor’s car and the car across the street but went right by our car and I know why. We had bought Butterfinger insurance and because of that they wouldn’t dare.
So when I became the distributor of the candy rather than the recipient my plan was clear. My wife would ask, “Good God why don’t you just by the cheap candy it doesn’t make any difference!” Maybe that’s part of why we divorced. Even though I had told her the story she didn’t get it. But my children understood, they too lived in that house that gave away that good candy.
So this year we are giving out the full sized Butterfingers and Baby Ruths total cost
$18.00, two bags of cheap candy $6.00 for a difference of $12.00 you too can be a legend, to be loved by the neighborhood children. To be thought kindly of by the next generation and to give your children neighborhood status for .3 cents a day. What a deal!
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