HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I woke up this Halloween morning to the sound of rain and thunder.  Before going back to bed, where I belong, I checked the weather and heard that it's going to be gone by tonight.

Then I remembered the best Halloween of my childhood.  We were visiting the cousins in Chattanooga who lived in an urban neighborhood of old dingy houses.  When my cousins and Bob and I returned, our brown grocery bags filled with candy, we did what children everywhere do on Halloween night: we dumped our treats onto the living room floor and separated our favorites from the marginals.

Then I remembered: I had seen a new word scrawled on the wall of a building.  It started with F and had four letters.  "What does F-O-C-K mean?" I asked the parents who were sitting in a circle around the room.

There was a lot of clearing of throats in that house of Baptists at that moment, a hurrying to change the subject, but I noticed a sputtering of quick grins appear on the faces of the menfolk.  I'd spelled my new word wrong--I'd later discover--but I'd stumbled across a new knowing: certain words could cause big people's faces to turn red.

Baby Ruths and Reese cups were my favorites--still are--and on that night we were allowed to stuff ourselves until bedtime.  Hard candies and butterscotch and mints went back to the bottom of the bag and I woke up the next morning under a blanket of Baby Ruth wrappers.