Trick or Treat? Halloween In My Small Village

What's better for children than dressing up and getting candy and goodies?

Pumpkins in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Halloween 2023. Photo: Suzanne Spellen

I began writing on substack in the fall of 2021. I think I had about 30 followers at the time, most of them friends who saw my posts on my Facebook pages. This was one of my first stories. Over the last three years, my readership has expanded greatly (thank you all,) but most of you may not have seen this the first time. I hope you enjoy it. Happy Halloween!

When I was a child, Halloween was a magical time. My family moved from St. Albans, Queens to the small upstate NY village of Gilbertsville when I was six. I have a vague memory of trick or treating in Queens the year before we moved, but for all intents and purposes, the Halloween memories of my youth are all from Gilbertsville. They are great memories that I will cherish.

Gilbertsville is a compact little village, with streets radiating out from the center of town. It’s not very big, with a population of about 400. The village was founded by a man named Gilbert after the Revolutionary War, and most of the housing stock is wonderfully old, much of it built in the mid-19th century. It’s really a beautiful village, picturesque and homey. I don’t recall it ever looking run-down and depressing, like some places. If you love small rural villages, you’d want to live there. If I could afford it, I’d love to still have a home there. It’s special, with a special place in my heart.

The village represents quintessential small-town America, a place where everyone knows everyone else, they know a lot about you and your business, and many of the oldest founding families are distantly related. The people in the village have always been generous, good church-going folk, with traditions and institutions that sustained them over the centuries. Despite what many kids thought by the time they reached high school and couldn’t wait to get out, one could certainly grow up in worse places.

Halloween in Gilbertsville was great. As an older person now, I can revel in the “back when I was a kid” stories and state with all honesty that Halloween was much better then. When we went trick or treating, we didn’t have to worry about people poisoning candy, or grabbing children, or property destruction or many of the horrors that many modern parents fear today.

When a child went trick or treating back then, people used to make baked goods for treats. We used to get brownies and cookies as well as candy, much of it loose and not packaged in small packs. Sometimes we’d get apples, both plain and candied. No one worried about razor blades inside them, or worse. What is wrong with people? The worst thing that could happen would be that someone would give you a “trick” instead of a “treat,” and you’d get a brownie with a cotton ball baked into the center. That never happened to me, but we heard tales.

The reality was that most of the adults in Gilbertsville were too frugal to waste good baked goods on “tricks,” and most enjoyed Halloween giving as much as the kids loved going from door to door. The great thing about Gilbertsville was that you could actually get around to most of the village on foot in a night and come home with enough sugar and goodies to last you for weeks. We roamed the streets for hours, going door to door.

I remember a couple of memorable Halloweens. The first one was probably the first year that we lived in Gilbertsville. We didn’t actually live in the village itself; our house was on top of the hill that led down into the village. We were just inside the boundaries to be picked up by the school bus and were the last pickup before the bus rolled down the hill into town. When we got older, we used to ride our bikes to school.

That distance prevented us from being townies. We were slightly isolated by being on the hill, but everyone knew we were there. I’m betting the news of our arrival got around the village very quickly. You see, we were one of the few African American families in the area. This was back in 1961. We were the only family to have small children. A year later, another family with two small children moved in, also just out of town, but in the opposite direction.

So that first Halloween, my Mom made us costumes, which was pretty much what most parents did, then. The cheap plastic masks and nylon fabric costumes that came in boxes existed, but most people still made their own. I was a gypsy, with flowing skirts and bright scarves, and lots of jewelry. My younger brother was a pirate, with a homemade hat, a red scarf around his waist and flowing pantaloons. Both costumes were oversized, so one could wear warm clothes underneath. We were padded gypsies and pirates, and cute as all get out.

So, there we were, holding hands with our Dad, walking through Gilbertsville trick or treating. I was six, my brother was four. We had our baskets for loot, and we went door to door, joining other kids and their families. Many of the homeowners had decorations at their house, stalks of corn, bales of hay and jack-o-lanterns with candles flickering inside. Some people had ghosts made of sheets and thick strands of cobwebs stretched across porches and windows. It could be a bit scary, except that we knew our Dad would keep us safe.

It was all great fun and pretty uneventful. We stopped at the mayor’s house, the Presbyterian and Baptists ministers’ houses, and the houses of my classmates. Then we continued down the streets until we got to this one house. We climbed the porch, rang the doorbell, and an older couple came to the door. I will never forget it. They looked at us and the man exclaimed, “Look Martha, little Negroes!” They both stood there and marveled at us. We stood there, beaming up at them, and said “Trick or treat!” They gave us lots of candy, called us adorable, and off we went.

I remember asking my father, “We’re little Negroes? I’m a gypsy, and Mark is a pirate.” I don’t remember what my father said, I doubt he was ready for it either, but it was all soon forgotten by my brother and me, as we reached another house, and got more candy. The incident was pushed to the back of my mind, where it lived for years. Those people were not unkind, I guess they just had never seen little black kids at their door. And they DID give us lots of candy.

As the years went by, we got older and trick or treating continued. I remember the year we informed our parents that we didn’t need my father walking with us and holding our hands, we were big enough to go trick or treating by ourselves.  I was probably around ten years old. It wasn’t like we didn’t know the village, or where to go. Amazingly enough, they didn’t argue. My Dad drove us down the hill and let us off in the center of town. We set out confidently, making our rounds.

We got down the first block when I could feel someone behind us. But when we turned around, no one was there, except other kids. It took us a couple of blocks to catch sight of Dad ducking behind trees and houses, following us. We never let him know we knew he was there, and he never said a word about being there. He picked us up at the appointed place and time and we went home to pour our loot into a big bowl to share. Another Halloween had ended, and we were safe and sound. Yes, for reasons great and small, Gilbertsville was a good place to grow up.

“Pumpkinous Giganticus.” I wonder how much they paid for this and what they did with it after Halloween. Photo: Suzanne Spellen