Post Halloween Festivities

We were sitting around the table, the four adults eating homemade Peach Pie. While the kids zoomed around us, and over us, and under us ... Buzzing on the sugar and andrenaline high that was going on in their tender little bodies.

We were just talking about Halloween, costumes and how we did it when we were kids. And I began to think of what was probably one of my last "Trick or treat" nights. I guess I was 12.

Here in North Florida on Halloween it is seldom cold. Well, cold enough to worry about layers anyway. I had decided to dress up as Huck Finn, it was an easy enough costume. I just borrowed one of dads old shirts, got out my torn up jeans, found a straw hat in the garage and pulled a corn-cob pipe from ... Well, I am not sure where I got that.

So as we wandered up the road, pillowcases slung over our backs someone mentioned that I didn't have anything in my pipe. I bent down and quickly rectified that with a handful of Centipede torn from a neighbors lawn.

We wandered around and got to a house with a young couple, the husband was outside creeping in the shadows in a gorilla costume, and the wife was dressed up as a sexy witch (memories that crept into my thoughts a few years later as adolescence reared its ugly head). He crept up behind us right as we rang the doorbell and screamed when she opened the door. We all jumped sky-high and almost dropped our bags and ran.

We laughed and joked, and she quizzed us all to figure out what and who we were. She got to me and was impressed with the literary reference and then asked the key question.

What's in your pipe?

To which I replied innocently ...

Grass

That got a roar of laughter and approval from the gorilla behind us, and I got a handful more of candy "Cause you need it!"

Of course at the time I was bewildered and had no idea what they were talking about. It was a few more years before I was able to understand the humor in the situation. All I knew at the time was that I had pointed out that my pipe had grass in it, and I got extra candy because of it.

So I tried the old "Hey you know what's in my pipe? Grass!" line a few more times that night, but never to the same effect.

Now I think about it, and wonder how I'd react if some kid pulled that line on me? Would I laugh and give him another candy bar, or would I just shake my head and wonder aloud what the world is coming to when children make drug jokes.

Either way .. That night .. Almost 30 years ago, I got extra candy out of it, And was envied by the rest of the motley crew trick or treating with me.


Dave ...