Halloween in the 1970s and 80s in Upstate New York Ben Cooper Costume Style

It was October 31, 1976 and I was only three years old in upstate NY. That's me on the left. I was wearing a Ben Cooper Princess costume. I really loved the days during my early trick-or treating years when I wore a Ben Cooper costume to school and paraded around the classrooms with my classmates for the older kids to see us. One of those older kids was my sister. She is four years older than I am. After the costume parade, we would go back to our desks and have a Halloween party. There would be cupcakes, cookies, and candy. You sure wouldn’t see that in the schools today. Any sugary treat is frowned upon these days. After the school bus would drop us off at home, we would freshen up and then press onward to trick-or-treat with my cousins in the early evening hours. I can remember my Mom starting up the old green Dodge to warm it up and away we went to three different small towns to gather all of our candy loot. We would travel to Massena, Brasher Falls, and my favorite town Brookdale where my Nana and Aunt Betty lived.

There were no time curfews back then. You could start as early as 4 PM and finish up by 10 PM at night just in time to go to bed for school the next morning. I remember that even though we were tired from the long haul, we had so much fun. We literally would have so much candy that it would last us until after Christmas with even with my Mom and Dad chipping in and eating a lot of the candy with us. I can remember one year my Mom couldn't even close her car trunk because there were two garbage bags full of candy. She would then grab a couple of grocery bags from the back seat and start filling those up so the trunk would be able to close. After we arrived to my aunt's house, we would then have my Mom go through all of the candy to make sure everything looked okay and safe to eat. It seemed to be even more so as the years had passed after hearing about instances where bad people were putting razors inside apples and poisoning candy. We were fortunate that nothing like that happened to us.

That’s another thing. We didn't have the candy like we do today. It was much better. We didn't have any candy that was "fun-sized." We had real, normal sized candy bars like Hershey's, Clark Bars, Milky Way's, Snickers and much more. The Pixy Stix candy were as long as our arms. There were candy cigarettes by the dozen. They were sure tasty and we thought it was fun in those days to act like you were smoking them. Back then, it wasn't frowned upon that you were acting like your parents and smoking a candy cigarette as it is today. Life was different back then. And let's not forget the Sweet Tarts, the Smarties, and the Bottlecaps. There was so much sugar there that we could've literally started a candy store.

Things are so much different today than they were back then. They've cut the hours down less than three for the whole night. Candy portions are cut by three-fourths and many homes don't even offer to decorate their homes or offer candy anymore. Where did the joy and fun of Halloween go?

I remember after the candy haul, we would stop by my Nana's and my Aunt Betty's and share our tales of the night with warm cookies and root beer Kool-Aid waiting for us. I truly miss those days. It seems like so long ago. Halloween night has changed so much since I was little. The decorations were more vintage style and much scarier. So weren't the costumes. The candy was bigger and so were the hearts of the people that gave it. I sure wish they would allow Halloween to be like it used to be. It's just no fun anymore.