Before Trick Or Treat

I enjoyed the article on Halloween (October) very much, especially because it has cleared up a question that has bothered me for years. As a child in Detroit, I went door to door with my siblings and friends, wailing in a pitiful voice, “Help the poor!” Years later, when my children began the annual Halloween trek about the neighborhood (now in Oklahoma), they were astounded when I told them what we had said. They said I had to be wrong, and all my friends claimed they’d never heard of such a thing. Now I know it must have been a vestige of the old Irish-immigrant custom.