When most people think of Halloween, they think of trick-or-treating. It’s one of those dreams of childhood where you knock on anyone’s door, and most of them just give you candy! In Park City, according to Lila Nelson Berry, “We’d go all over town, I mean clear to the bottom of Park Av enue. It took us all over town to get our bags full of candy.” This custom actually didn’t come about until the Great Depression. In the 1930s and 1940s, Halloween participants would go door-to-door and get either a trick or a treat at each stop (hence “trick or treat”). One house gave out cheap costume materials like tattered sheets or makeup made from ash or soot. Another home gave treats. In Park City, Berry noted most homes gave “homemade goodies like popcorn balls, or cookies, or an apple and nuts, We didn’t get a lot of candy because people didn’t buy much candy in those days, It was kind of a luxury, and then during the war there wasn’t a lot of candy to be had.” And a third home made a short spook house experience in their cellar or front hall. In the ’30s, during the Depression, this trick-or-treat by committee helped save money for everyone involved. In the ’40s, this helped everyone during the rationing efforts of World War II. But mainly it kept kids occupied because prior to that, pranking was the primary mode of Halloween celebration for most kids, as covered in previous Halloween Way We Weres. In Park City, the first documentation of Halloween pranking was from 1905. The Park Record reported that “Halloween sprites were out in full force” removing gates and loose stone steps from front yards, sending wagons on driverless journeys, and participating in other “harmless mischief.” Removing the gates from fences, relocating or spilling ash cans (waste cans for ashes from furnaces and fireplaces), and soaping windows were some of the most common pranks between 1900 and 1942. One unique prank for Park City kids, according to Lila and Jim Berry, was for everyone to cut the lights on Burt Bircumshaw. “You’d go along past there, and every kid that went past would pull his light switch, you know the fuse box, the outdoor fuse box, and then hop over his fence. And he’d come out and curse and rave and rant, and then the next group would come, and you could hear him all the way up and down Park Avenue.” Former Parkite Patrick Hurley noted that in the first half of the 20th Century, many Parkites did not have plumbing or sewers. Homes along Poison Creek (then called Poison Ditch) had outhouses over the stream. Hurkey and his friends “used to think it was great fun to, on Halloween night, go tip over those outdoor toilets. then run like the dickens!” Apparently one of those Halloweens, someone was using the facilities when he and his friends turned it over. He said. “Well, we didn’t know what to do then, so we ran faster! We weren’t caught then, so no harm, no foul.” Surely the smell was at least foul for that unfortunate soul. Pranks became less important after World War II as kids sought candy for the holidays when the post-war economic boom allowed trick-or-treating to grow exponentially. Of course, Halloween is alive and well in more modern times, though trick-or-treating has almost entirely replaced pranking as the primary youth activity for the holiday. In Park City, one of the biggest events of the entire year is Main Street trick-or-Treating. Main Street trick-or-treating might have its origins with a fundraiser from 1985, when Brent Bloomenthal and his family hosted a Halloween carnival at the Main Street marketplace to raise funds for their 5 year old’s cancer treatments. Park City closed the street and had shuttles running to bring people in. The first time I could find any mention of an event called Halloween on Main, however, was in 1996. So it appears this year is the 31st year, although it was canceled in 2020, so perhaps its only 30. Happy Halloween Park City! Dalton Gackle is the Park City Museum research coordinator. The post Way We Were: Tricks and treats appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less