Mama Kat Thursday: Halloween Traditions

The Mama Kat prompt today is generally about what I like to do for Halloween.

When I was growing up in rural Indiana, I used to love dressing up and going door-to-door trick or treating!
 We lived way out in the country, so Mother would drive us around, usually to homes of people we knew were prepared for trick or treaters.
Some of those people when all out on treats!

I also loved carving pumpkins. Every year, each of us would be given a pumpkin to fish the seeds out of and carve a face in. Sometime home grown; sometimes store bought. So yearly, we carved pumpkins with faces lit by candles every night graced our front porch. 

Then later, when Hubby and I lived in Air Force base housing here in Florida, trick or treating was a HUGE deal! Literally, hundreds of neighborhood kids would make the rounds through every block and you'd go through a mixing bowl load of candy in no time!
Hubby and I would dress in costume for the occasion. I suppose, being on Air Force base, people felt really safe going door to door.

Then in 1988, we built a house in town, where we still presently live. I still love a good old-fashioned carved pumpkin with a candle in it and for a few years, I'd carve a small pumpkin for Halloween display. Kids lived on our street then and people were still feeling relatively safe trick or treating door to door. I'd dress in costume for the occasion and have candy ready.

By the early 2000's, I'd given up carving an actual pumpkin and had traded-up for an electric plug-in Jack O'Lantern. Just easier. Trick or treaters were still coming to the door, though, and I'd still dress up, though the numbers were thinning and people stopped driving from neighborhood to neighborhood for their kids to go house to house altogether.
Taking kids to "Fall Festivals" or "Orange Festivals" or "Trunk or Treat" things became a growing trend and gradually door to door trick or treating stopped altogether--at least in my neighborhood.
I dressed in costume and had a candy ready for several years more years as I watched my Halloween visitors shrink from 10 to 5 to 3 to 1 to none at all.

My tradition currently is to put out my electric Jack O' Lanterns about mid-October. A tall one sits on out by Holly tree smiling toward the street and this triple stack, in the photo above, sits by my front door ready to welcome guests. 
 I still leave my porch lights on from 5 to 8 every Halloween---just in case.
I don't dress in costume anymore, but I still always have some little bit of candy on hand, (something I can bake with for Christmas later.)

Last year, friends of ours drove to our house to pay us a special trick or treat with their 4 kids. I was very pleased.

My other semi-tradition is to watch "The Mummy" with Brendan Fraser while I'm waiting around from 5 to 8 for that elusive trick or treater.
Maybe our friends will bring their kids by again this year.