It was (and is) a most wonderful time …

In less disconcerting times, most kids will honestly tell you that Halloween is pretty close to being their favorite night of the year.

Back when I and my siblings roamed neighborhood streets on October 31st, there were no evil connotations or all the various overtones tainting most everything these days.

We’d run door-to-door in packs of ghosts and witches and hoboes and cowboys and such, gleefully shouting ‘Trick or treat!” when smiling grownups greeted us with, often, howls of laughter at our usually hilarious presence.

Rarely did you see one of those fancy store-bought costumes, because our disguises were typically crafted by mothers who deftly wielded eyebrow pencils or burnt corks or various other makeup skills to convert their sons and daughters into TV-worthy characters from Red Skelton’s Freddie the Freeloader to the Wicked Witch of the West, while dads often produced tiny Lone Rangers or combat soldiers and such.

The easiest one of all was, of course, the ghost, consisting of two holes in an old bedsheet, though most of us didn’t particularly care for that one since you spent half your house-running time trying to keep the holes aligned with your eyes.

And unlike today, when so many folks opt to turn off the porch light and ignore the packs of giggling toddlers, Halloween was actually a grand community occasion and, at least where I grew up, became almost a competition among households as to who could give out the most creative treats.

One of our neighbors, an ‘elderly’ couple (they were probably, like, in their fifties), the McClancys, would invite us in for hot chocolate and some kind of treat Mrs. McClancy had labored over, like Rice Krispy squares or brownies.

The ones we boys loved the most, of course, were those folks who handed out actual full-sized candy bars, from Snickers to Milky Ways and Hershey bars, because we knew when we got back home and the trading commenced, we’d have a bartering edge over stuff like candy corn or jawbreakers or bubble gum.

I was fortunate, too, to grow up in a time when Halloween nights had that one element you never had to think about: fear.

There were no news flashes or warnings of foreign objects imbedded in treats or predators roaming the streets, that kind of thing.

It was a night when we could all celebrate being kids, think about nothing but having fun and simply enjoying life for one evening when it was okay to go a little crazy and just laugh and run and play and forget about the world’s problems.

A most wonderful time, indeed.

Maybe it’s time to put the happy back in Halloween, y’all.