It was the year of the yard waste. Our trash collection company had delivered spanking fresh green toters so that we could dispose of all the deadfall and trimmings from the property. It was October, and our kids were young teens, too old to go trick-or-treating, but too young to miss out on the fun of the night.

John came up with the idea of putting the nice clean toter on the front porch, and hiding inside until he could rise out of it and cause a fright. It was simple, but so very effective. What’s Halloween without a little scare?

When my older brother, Emmett, and his best friend, Fred Kaparich, hit that age, they devised a much more elaborate scheme. It was the time when poor old Charlie Brown was waiting faithfully in the comic strip patch for “The Great Pumpkin” to arrive.

Emmett and Fred knew a lot about electronics, so they hooked up speakers and a microphone in a pumpkin in front of Fred’s house, and they took turns talking to all the costumed children that approached the house. They used a fake Russian accent that sounded very much like Boris Badenov from The Bullwinkle show. It was so much fun that people kept coming to the house long after Mrs. Kaparich ran out of candy!

Another year, my mom decided to use “Thing” from The Addams Family to hand out candy. She rigged up a covered box over a hole in a card table, and we “volunteered” to take turns sitting under the table. When she asked Thing for a treat, an apparently disembodied hand would pop out of the box and plop candy into a child’s waiting loot bag. Once again, it was the hit of the neighborhood. Mom was pretty proud of herself.

I never do anything elaborate for Halloween, but I carve pumpkins to bring light to the driveway and the porch. And I have a spider on a string that moves up and down when the door opens. The most impressive screams come from young men who are afraid of nothing else, but an unexpected spider makes them shriek like a little girl. It never gets old!

The kids are gone now, so the controlled chaos of the day is a thing of the past. We eat chili or Autumn Chowder, and play cards by the front door to be ready to hand out candy. It’s so much fun to see how the neighborhood children have grown. And I usually scare myself with the spider-on-a-spring about three times in the course of the night. Simple yet so very effective! After all, what’s Halloween without a little scare?

Patty Luzzi has lived on the Eastside for 32 years. Readers can contact her at pattyluzzi@yahoo.com.