I am writing this the day after Halloween 2021, but the story started more than 40 years ago.

We brought our adopted son Nick home for the first time in October when he was just 4 months old.  So Halloween was the first holiday for our new family and has forevermore been a special day.  Early Halloweens were a challenge as Nick would not abide a mask, so his costumes were custom creations that incorporated makeup instead.  Jack-o-Lanterns were standard.  Once, we had to build a special stand for the front yard as we must have carved 20 pumpkins that year.

In the early 1980s, there were so many, often unsubstantiated, reports of people putting poison or foreign objects in Trick-or-Treat candy that a panic resulted.  People stopped letting their kids Trick-or-Treat.  Hospitals were  offering to x-ray candy for parents.  Some cities banned Halloween celebrations.  Some states passed laws specific to the sabotage of candy.

We countered the concerns by giving out toys instead of candy.  Small toys such as little cars, airplanes, dinosaurs.  Halloween-themed toys like fake spiders and bats.  Stickers and bracelets were also popular at the time.  Most kids were happy to get the toys.  Parents were appreciative.  We asked every Trick-or-Treater to tell their friends that “This house is giving away toys!”  We were soon back to our usually October 31st count of more than 100 Trick-or-Treaters.   Ours became know as the “Toy House”.

I enjoyed buying the toys in the lead-up to Halloween.  We shopped at Frank Steins. It is a novelty store in the warehouse district in the City of LA.  Their customers were people who ran arcades, or had a vending route for the dispensing machines you used to see in stores where you could put in a quarter and get a little cheap plastic toy.  The toys were usually sold by the gross, and were no more expensive than buying an equivalent day’s worth of candy.

Not every kid approved of getting toys rather than candy.  Our favorite was a five-year-old Princess who walked into our living room while her father looked on from the front steps.  While looking in the bowl of toys we had placed in front of her she looked at Carrie and asked as only an indignant five-year-old dressed as a Princess can, “Don’t you have any kids?  Don’t you know you are supposed to give out candy?”  We were laughing.  Her father was shouting at her to pick a toy and not be rude.  She did pick some toys, and did say ‘Thank You’.  But you could tell there was pity for us in her voice.

This last anecdote is terrible and I apologize in advance for still being amused by the memory.  Not all Trick-or-Treaters were kids.  A good number were adults, some of whom were homeless and looking to supplement their diet.  By the early 2000s, the candy anxieties had subsided if not fully disappeared. We adopted a hybrid model of a mix of candy and our traditional toys for treats.  Answering the door one Halloween , amidst a small herd of small kids ringing our doorbell was a very tall, apparently drunk man in his mid-30s somewhat joyously bellowing “Trick-or-Treat!” as he presented his pillowcase trick-or-treat bag for us to fill.  As with every other visitor, we dropped a handful of toys and a handful of candy into his bag.  Seeing the toys, he may have been confused or just curious and looked in his pillowcase.  But instead of lifting the pillowcase closer to his face, he bent over further and further to get a closer look.   Physics took over.  Center of gravity was exceeded.  And we had a guy stretched out flat,  face-first on our living room floor.  No one was hurt. The kids didn’t let the commotion keep them from getting their treats.  Drunk guy recovered himself and his footing well enough to leave the house and porch under his own power.  He told us thank you repeatedly as he continued on his way.