Halloween 12 hour Shift - HS2023 (non-writer)

We were so poor that we approached trick or treating as a seasonal job. Twelve full hours. Then we rationed our hauls for a full year.

I'd like to say that we wore our shoes out with all the walking but we were barefoot, saving the shoes for school.

A secret was to go to houses that didn't do Halloween, with lights out. When the man or woman at the door said they had no candy our line was "That's okay, we will accept carrots, onions, or potatoes and any type of canned food."

We made our own costumes; almost always hobo or child runaway themed. Lack of imagination for sure.

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This was written to be a joke, a take off from another thread. Now it doesn't seem funny, like I wrote it wrong. Maybe it's that the timing is off, perhaps by 30 years.

The End

a reply to: FullHeathen

I like it! Funny! S/F

a reply to: JJproductions

I think it comes off as a How To ...

Maybe I should of stuck with a Gift of the Magi takeoff.

I used to go to school early to use the stapler to get my pants to fit.
We traded our stapler at a yard sale for the oversized pants.

I remember when corduroy went out of style.
That's when I started wearing corduroy.

And don't even get me started on wing-tip shoes.

a reply to: FullHeathen

I love corduroy! Never had wing tip!

a reply to: FullHeathen

I like it too ... both creative, and practical actually, with real world applications

a reply to: JJproductions


Old style wing tips had leather soles, the opposite of sneakers. Crunch, crunch.

They were valuable enough to be "half-soled" like retread tires though. You can see it on the picture.

a reply to: Fowlerstoad

I think the picture may have saved the story.
I didn't want to explain what a bindle is.

a reply to: FullHeathen

This is a tough one, FullHeathen. You evoke mixed emotions; we laugh and cry at the same time. The last time I felt such emotional conflict was with the 1997 movie “La Vita è Bella” – “Life is Beautiful”. Roberto Benigni masterfully pulled at our heartstrings and simultaneously tickled our funny bone.

It also reminds me of my childhood. We weren’t poor, but not wealthy either. At Halloween my mother wouldn’t buy my brother and I commercial costumes. Instead, she made our outfits that we used every year; my brother was Red Riding Hood (red cape) and I was The Grandmother (mum’s nightgown and a night bonnet)… I felt like such an idiot going around, but we got lots of goodies; gifts out of compassion, I guess.