The old man was a workaholic. Days off were few and far between, and 16-hour shifts were the norm while we were growing up. By the time my brother and I woke up at 6 a.m. to get ready for school, he’d already been in his shop building stock for an hour-and-a-half.
When we climbed off the bus at 4:30 p.m., he still had at least two hours left. The only break during the day was a quick lunch and a 30-minute nap. The long hours were necessary to put food on the table, but I think he actually enjoyed working that much.
Despite the seemingly never-ending grind of hammering out belts, wallets and other leather goods, Dad always managed to make time for his boys. I think about that often. Even after working 16 hours, he’d play catch or basketball with us, or we’d go fishing, hunting and swimming.
Dad typically was even-keel. Though he had a temper, he didn’t get excited all that often. Holidays were the exception. Christmas was always at the top of that list, followed by Thanksgiving.
At this time of the year, Halloween was a big deal. There wasn’t a big lead-up to that day, but he absolutely loved taking us trick-or-treating. As I’ve written numerous times, anything for his boys.
My earliest memory of Halloween was our first one in Joplin, Missouri, in 1982. Mom wasn’t home, so Dad had holiday duty. He dressed us up in our costumes (I was G.I. Joe and Dan was Luke Skywalker) and took a long break in the afternoon to watch us walk in the grade school parade.
Later that night, Dad took another break to take us trick-or-treating for the first time at ages 6 and 4. We walked three blocks in the dark, loading up on candy, as the old man watched us walk up to the doors with a huge smile on his face.
One of my lasting memories of that night is knocking on one door at a house full of 20-somethings throwing a party.
“We don’t have any candy, man,” a young man answering the door said.
As we walked back toward my father, I heard, “Fucking punk. How can you not have any candy?”
After years in jail and decades of fighting, the old man wasn’t exactly afraid of confrontation. There wasn’t one in this case. There rarely was when Dad broke off “The Look.”
Six years later, Dan and I were 12 and 10 and in our final year in Lebanon, Missouri. We’d debated going trick-or-treating because we knew Dad was busy and Mom was out of town at a craft show.
Early in the evening, as it was getting dark, the old man jumped up and said, “Put on our costumes. We’re going trick-or-treating.”
Nearly a teenager, I asked if I was too old. Dad said, “If I’m not too old, you aren’t. And if you want, we can say this is the last time you’re going, and that means we’re going to load up.”
He wasn’t kidding. We drove into Lebanon from our house in the boonies and visited at least a dozen neighborhoods that night. Dressed as a mafia hitman and with my brother the vampire, we collected enough candy to kill a horse.
By the time we got home three hours later, our grocery-sized paper bags were full of Reese’s peanut butter cups, mini-Snickers, Twix, Milky Ways and much, much more.
After each stop that night, Dan and I told Dad we were tired and thought we had enough. Time and time again, he said, “Let’s just do one more. It’s your last time trick-or-treating, babe.”
For years, I didn’t understand why Dad got so excited on days like that. I finally got it while interviewing him during the final months of his life: He never got to do a lot of the things we did because he was working to help his family survive from age 7 on.
Every time we knocked on a door and said, “Trick or treat,” the old man might as well have been dressed as Dracula asking for candy. Through us, he was finally experiencing Halloween.