Hershey bars come to the “Trick or Treat” bag of the 1940s
Halloween was a unique and very special time of the year in my old neighborhood. Every mother’s kitchen smelled sweet with warm sugar and spices.
In my own family home, bottles of vanilla and bowls of brown sugar were carefully arranged upon mom’s worktable. All the ingredients for pumpkin pies and candied nuts were set aside and ready for mixing, including at least four or five of grandpa's largest homegrown pumkins. Meanwhile, grandma was busy cracking and shelling almonds and walnuts to be tossed into the hot caramel glaze boiling on the stove.
Glazed nuts were among our favorite Halloween treats.
Like most kids in my little community of Willow Glen, I looked forward to the Halloween excitement that took hold each year in every household.
Come Halloween night the fun of the trick or treat ritual began. All along the avenue windows glowed with carved jack o’Lantern’s. In doorways paper witches and scarecrows dangled ominously in the dark.The first "trick or treat" stop on our Terra Bella route was the home of the Nelson family. The Nelsons were a warm charismatic Swedish family. Mrs. Nelson was an excellent pastry maker and every Halloween she prepared a bounty of crispy peach pies for her visiting goblins and ghouls.
Our next stop was the Gaylord home. Mrs. Gaylord was from England. I guess that's why she liked to mull her apple cider like a carefully brewed pot of tea. The hot, spicy aroma of cinnamon, cloves, and mulled apple cider wafted through her home on a cold night and warmed the hearts of her little visitors.
A moment later we were dashing down the street to Mr. and Mrs. Romano’s house. Running up the driveway to the back door the fragrance of freshly made fudge greeted our eager nostrils. "Trick or treat", "Trick or treat", we screamed out the magic words that opened every door.
Mrs. Romano opened the back door; in her hands a huge tray of warm fudge. Mr. Romano was busy helping out with the production of freshly made candy and caramel covered apples. Everything was made from scratch back then, fresh cream, sugar, semi-sweet chocolate and vanilla. The aromas were unforgettable and everlasting.
Our next stop was across the street at the Minnerva home. Every year, Mrs. Minnerva baked up a special batch of Italian biscotti. These long, thin,
crispy anise and almond filled cookies were a delicacy to be enjoyed with a glass of cold milk. We were given several cookies wrapped in orange paper and tied with colorful paper ribbons.But the most memorable of all these "trick or treat" candies was to come to us from our good friends at the Jones house. Mr. Jones was a successful contractor who was usually the first one on the block to try the latest innovation. So, I guess it was just natural he would be the first one in our neighborhood to give out 5 -cent Hershey bars that Halloween. When word got around that the Jones’ were dropping "store bought" candy bars into trick or treat sacks, a snake line of kids wound their way, to their front door.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I witnessed that big Hershey bar drop into my sack. Store bought candy had never before been handed out in mass, at least not on Halloween night, and never in my neighborhood.
When I got home that night and poured my treats out on the kitchen table my Italian grandparents were astonished and a little dismayed at the sight of a store bought Hershey bar among my homemade popcorn balls, cookies and hard candy. Such extravagance was shocking to them, after all, they never fully understood the idea of begging for candy from house to house in the first place. Grandma was convinced the expensive candy bar was a sign of decadence and grandpa believed it was an omen of bad things to come for our country's economy.
I'm not sure what the coming of the store bought candy bar foretold, but I do know that it marked the end of an era for my generation of kids, a time when we could go from house to house in our neighborhood and know every family and every doorway as if it were our own: when we could take home a cache of homemade goodies and treasure it, without concern as to its content or safety.
As our city began to grow and urban spread took hold, the little grocery stores became the big super markets, a string of tiny shops became supper malls and streets on the outskirts of town joined the growth to become part of the city limits.
Commercialism came along and it found a gold mine in the marketing of Halloween candy and decorations. Eventually the familiar scents, sights and sounds of Halloween, as we once knew it, would disappear, replaced by store-bought candy and ceramic-lighted pumpkins.
The traditional aroma created by the burning hot flame of a wax candle as it scorched the pumpkin lid has been replaced by the clean burning light bulb, which creates no smell and leaves no memory. Homemade pumpkin pies are bought frozen now and all our "trick or treat" candy is commercially made.
I guess, like a lot of things beloved from the 1940s and 50s, the old fashioned Halloweens that my generation once knew and enjoyed will be resigned to memory and remembered, now and then, in nostalgia columns such as mine.
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