1 post tagged “halloween”

Hippies1

When I was about 6, we lived in Coral Gables, a southern suburb of Miami, Florida.  This was back in the 70’s, which were turbulent times, especially in Miami.  I was too young to take stock of any of the movements that were afoot, but I sort of remember my mom pointing out “hippies” to me and she may have included some disparaging comments about “flower children,” those details are unclear.  But, I do remember this particular Halloween.  When we first moved to Coral Gables, we lived in a rental house in a middle-class neighborhood that bordered a sketchier part of town.  My older brother and I went trick-or-treating and, after we had exhausted all of the houses within the boundaries of our neighborhood, we decided - despite our parents’ admonishments - to venture out a little bit (oooohhh, scary!).  We walked a block or so out of our "zone," and found ourselves in front of this big, creepy house and there were three hippies sitting in folding chairs behind a card table in the front yard.  On the table was a big bowl of “treats.”  There were no pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns or anything else that was Halloween oriented.  But there were these people … with their big bowl and, why else would people be sitting out on Halloween with a big bowl of something, if they weren’t giving out treats?

I can still really picture their faces, smiling at us.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I’m sure they were stoned.  It was so dark and it seemed like we were the only kids around.  I wonder if they’d had any other trick-or-treaters, or if they were even posted in their front yard for that purpose.  Our approach was awkward, but we said our thing, “trick-or-treat!” and the smiling hippies scooped something out of their bowl and plopped it into each of our trick-or-treat bags. 

Then we raced home.  This apparently was enough venturing out for us.  We dug into our treat bags to see what the scary hippies had given us.  Amid all of the wrapped candy, there was something  . . . something . . . soggy?  … We dumped it all out and discovered …onion rings!  Freakin’ Onion Rings!  Do you think they were handing out treats or did we happen upon them in the midst of the munchies?  Almost every year around this time, I think about that Halloween and I still wonder what that was all about.  And it’s so absolutely amusing to me that our scariest Halloween encounter was with a bunch of stoned hippies!