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Halloween Candy
By David Glenn Cox
What does Halloween candy really mean? For millions of children it means good times, not just the eating of the sweet stuff but the thrill of collecting it as well. Coming home and then sorting the good candy from the chaff. When I was about eleven we had moved into a new neighborhood. Although I knew most all the kids in the neighborhood from school already, I was still the new guy.
My mother, having forgotten 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 without.
Not that he was anti-social or anything, it was just that the roles at that time dictated that dad bought and you did. Try to imagine Ward Cleaver passing out candy. Anyhow, 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 his car to investigate. What we found were nine boxes of candy, three boxes of each, but it was not just the volume of the candy purchased, it was the the size. My father had purchased nine boxes of the movie-sized candy bars. Not the minis or the fun-sized, and why the hell do they call those fun-sized? Tiny, little candy bars aren’t any fun. But huge movie theater candy bars are the truly fun-sized candy bars. Large, now that’s fun!
My first thought was to turn off the porch light and dodge Halloween this year altogether, after all I wouldn’t ever score this big on the street. My mother rolled her eyes at Dad’s purchase but she understood, maybe Dad was dumb or maybe he was just playing dumb. He had grown up poor in the teeth of the great depression and appreciated hard times and he rejoiced in his prosperity. So, as I left the house to trick or treat myself, my thoughts were already on the leftovers. They couldn’t possibly give all that candy 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 down from the corner over on Leonard!” It was all over the neighborhood, it was the only topic of conversation. Acquaintances 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!”
And 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 later would be given, “You know where that house is where the people gave out those huge candy bars on Halloween?”
“Of course,” was always the answer, “Sure, everyone knows where that house is!”
When I returned home to the shrine of the giant candy bars I was a legend, and due only to my mother’s prudence she had saved us a couple of the candy bars from the chocolate-starved thundering herd that had swamped our front door. As she told it, they never stopped, she barely had a chance to shut the door. My father thought it was all very funny, but my mother’s tiredness tempered his desire to tell us just how funny he actually 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 because 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 on the car across the street but went right by our car, and I know why. We had purchased Butterfinger insurance, and because of that they wouldn’t dare.
So when it became my turn to become the distributor of the candy, rather than the recipient, my plan was clear. My wife would ask, “Good God, why don’t you just buy the cheap candy? It really doesn’t make any difference!” Maybe that’s part of why we divorced; even though I had told her the story, she still didn’t get it. But my children understood, they, too, lived in that house that gave away the good candy.
So this year we are giving out the full sized Butterfingers and Baby Ruths for a total cost of $18.00. Two bags of cheap candy cost $6.00 and for the small 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 own children neighborhood status for the small price of .3 cents a day. What a deal!
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