When I was a wee lad, my mother Vivian took me for a walk after supper. It was a beautiful late October night. A harvest moon was shining down, so bright that it almost seemed like daytime. The stillness of that hallowed evening was suddenly interrupted by a child’s screams. Mine.

I had looked up at a nearby house’s porch and there it was. A monster. Actually, a carved pumpkin illuminated by a lit candle and featuring big, scary eyes and a mouth filled with sharp teeth with which to eat me. It seems that every Halloween thereafter mom would regale anyone who’d listen about my first meeting with Jack O’Lantern and how my screams could be heard all the way to the Petkovsek brothers’ house on Moreland Street. Real funny. It took me a while to recover from the trauma. Talk about nightmares.

By the time I hit grade school, I grew to love the ancient Celtic holiday called Samhain which marked summer’s end and was a time to honor the deceased. Hit the computer and check out the event, held from Oct. 31 until Nov. 1.

While you’re at it, look up the Irish myth about the trickster Stingy Jack and the origin of the Jack-O -Lantern. It’s been said that placing it on your windowsill will ward off evil spirits; Lord knows there are enough around. Irish immigrants coming to America in the 19th century introduced the aforementioned tradition which, with the practice of trick-or-treating added in the 1930s, evolved into Halloween as we know it. The holiday’s centerpiece remains the pumpkin, sold to the tune of a billion pounds annually, carved in countless ways, made into one of our most sumptuous pies and popularized in an American literary classic-Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

On to Skinner Street, the “Gut” and trick-or-treating memories. Ain’t nothing I love more than candy. My mother rationed out the sweet stuff in the belief that it was the cause of my “ants-in-the-pants” condition. If she only knew that I spent my allowance ($.50 p/wk) on root beer barrels and caramel creams.

Anyway, the Furnace Street Gang struck candy gold on Halloween. Candy corn, Tootsie Roll pops, and if fortunate, 5-cent Hershey bars or candied apples (dentists’ delight). What I couldn’t chow down I stashed away in my bedroom. Late night snacks. I remember one year mom asked me why I brought home so little, and I told her that I was robbed. White lie. Other fun times included the costume parades and contests at Church Street Elementary and the huge party (dunkin for apples, etc.) at Roa’s on Furnace Street Extension..

Fonder memories were the tricks. Woe be it to the scrooges who slammed doors in our faces. Punishments meted out for such indiscretions varied. The gang’s favorite was soaping windows, especially cars. Another, introduced by myself, is a reminder that a trauma can have lasting effects; smashing into pieces carved pumpkins on display. The tricking fetish didn’t end with childhood. The Colonial Inn gang and I transported an outhouse from an abandoned farm and deposited it on the front porch of Freddy State president Oscar Langford.

Not all Halloween memories were happy. One in particular resonates. Most of us kids belonged to a working class family, both parents holding down jobs to make ends meet. My dad was DPW boss while mom labored away behind a machine at Burrows Paper Mill. There wasn’t a lot of money to go around. We didn’t venture to Water Safari or Disney World for vacation. A day at Caroga or Pine Lake sufficed — and was it fun! Ferris wheel, the whip and cotton candy. But the folks always had enough scratch for Halloween costumes. One year I was a cowboy with two silver-plated pistols by my side, while another found me shivering me timbers as a pirate, sword in hand and sporting a black eye patch. Coming in third at the costume contest in fourth grade highlighted that year.

Then there was the girl in our class who probably hated Halloween. From what I knew, she had no father, her mother worked odd jobs when available and she lived in what was derogatorily called a “dump.” Certainly no money available for a Halloween costume. I can still recall seeing her one year in the back of the room on contest day, traumatized, head down, hands clasped tightly together; a real life Raggedy Annie dressed in hand-me-downs two sizes too big. She skipped school the next year on 10/31. Halloween was bad enough, but probably no worse than most days. I think she enjoyed being in class. At least there she wasn’t picked on, mocked out, shamed for being poor. I’ve always felt guilty about all the candy I grew tired of eating and threw away. She would have been grateful for just a piece or two.

I believe that Thanksgiving was a difficult time for her as well. Thankful for what? Living in a shack, a variable igloo in the winter what with the north wind blowing through cracks in the wall; lucky to have two meals a day much less three; having to cope with the mental anguish caused by living a life filled with despair and without hope, the one word which, at one time or another, keeps all of us going. And Christmas? Can’t fathom a house without decorations and a tree dressed in tinsel, bulbs and colored lights. And no presents to open Christmas morning? Unimaginable. She left school the next year, and I often wonder what became of her.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone. There were millions like her living under similar circumstances, as there are today. Children of poverty are subjected to inexorable trauma regardless of where they live, be it inner-city ghettoes, rural hollows, the rez or barrios; regardless of color -white, red, black, brown. Tragic victims of fate. Worse, they have little hope of escaping from their hell on earth and, as studies have shown, are destined to doom their offspring to similar existences. Vicious cycle personified. Generation to generation.Too often we associate post traumatic stress disorder as a condition affecting combat veterans. It is far more prevalent among the poor, with far fewer chances of treatment.

So, readers, enjoy Halloween and all of its trappings — the kids and grandkids yucking it up in their costumes, trick-or-treating, wolfing down pieces of pumpkin pie and competing in those costume contests. But keep in mind, somewhere, some place, there’s that little girl or boy whose Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas pleasures come only in the form of dreams. In this, the richest nation in the world and a Christian one to boot, that should never have been, nor be, the case.

Well, gotta go. Time to carve the pumpkin. Happy Halloween.

Ray Lenarcic is a 1965 State University of New York at Fredonia graduate and is a resident of Herkimer.