Trick or Treat

i went home last weekend and was promptly dragged to a community dinner in stewartstown. we used to go to these almost every month, and everyone came – although attendance has apparently dwindled quite a bit over the years. after the dinner, there was a town meeting. i was getting uncomfortable from sitting on the hard seats – and it’s not like anything that would be discussed would actually affect me – so i decided to go take a walk outside.

have you ever walked around a place and the memories seem so far away that it feels like a lifetime ago? i walked down the street where i used to trick or treat; past the fields where we would run and play when i visited my cousins; over to the house that used to be the mcgregors’. it really has been a long time since i’ve wandered in this area, but it seems even longer. i don’t know if it’s because the last year felt more like four or five, or what, but i felt kind of disconnected from the area and my memories of the place. i mean, it’s not like i’m eighty and have this vast life time of memories to pour over or anything…

anyway, there’s a house on a hill just down the road from where i was. i didn’t walk over that far, mostly because i didn’t feel like mountain climbing in cool weather and causing an asthma attack, but it was the best house to go to when trick-or-treating. not very many kids ever went up there because it was a hike – the house sat on the crest of the hill, the road in the valley below it. it didn’t matter how good of shape you were in, by the time you were halfway up, you’d be puffing and wheezing and cursing the godforsaken landscape. so why did we bother? the people who lived there understood the ridiculous amounts of effort involved, and made the trek worth our whiles; not only did they give out full-size candy bars, they packaged several of those candy bars together for each trick-or-treater who rang the bell. granted, we often had to stop and rest (and eat one of those bars) before heading back down to continue our candy culling, but it was totally worth it.