What was Halloween like when you were a kid?

the Baby Boomers were the last kids to see a nice Halloween.

I wish that I could have been a Boomer all the time.

The toilet papered trees - I haven't seen that in years

Gen X here.

Our Halloweens were in the late 80s. Juvenile vandalism was the name of the game..

Egging houses, mailbox bashing, and there were always some crazy loons who would use fireworks to send mailboxes sky high.

It was never about the candy. It was about teenage mischief.

Today, it seems to be about the candy, which is good. I cringe at the crap we did, and I would be furious if some teenager did the stuff we did to me and my house!

I have repented!

I only saw for very brief amount of time growing up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else.
It was fun while polite, candy was home made, no one was afraid to eat it for fear of needles or blades.

We moved from there before I was in 2nd grade into the very rural area of my dad's land where his family's land was also.
There was no one else around for miles, we did not do Holidays except Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving, at school we did exchange Valentines.
Fall was Halloween to us and we did have Halloween toys and such at home and treats, just not away from home.

LOL! Toilet paper's gotten way too expensive!

I grew up in the 50's and 60's, in the 'burbs, when everybody knew everybody in the neighborhood and it was a fun, safe holiday.

Sometimes two or even three neighbors would get together and make a display, and someone in the neighborhood always had a garage which was set up like a "haunted house". Sometimes the kids would have a costume from the store, but usually we (meaning our parents) made our own. There were always lots of ghosts, pirates, Indians, hobos, and of course fairy princesses. The younger kids would go in groups with someone's Dad, and the older kids would go in groups of 3 or 4 but refrained from doing anything too naughty because all the parents knew all the kids and had no reservations about calling someone's parent if they were caught misbehaving.