14 FORGOTTEN Halloween Traditions Every 1970s American Kid Lived For

The plastic mask warmed against our face by the second block. By the third house, our cardboard chest had given up its handles. We dragged the pillowcase the last block home, double-knotted at the top. We were ten years old, somewhere in the nineteen seventies, on an American block where porch lights came on every other step. Fourteen things from those nights still live in the back of our heads. The toothbrush in the dentist's envelope at the bottom of the bag. Candy corn that lingered in the kitchen drawer through November. A popcorn ball wrapped in wax paper, still smelling of brown sugar. The older kid who walked us past the haunted house on the corner. The Ben Cooper costume box waiting before the school bus came. And the cookie. Still warm from a neighbor's kitchen, wrapped in a square of foil, handed over by a woman who had known our names since we were small. We did not know it was a goodbye. We thought it was Tuesday.