West Seattle Halloween Story

[trickycoolj]

I recently chatted with my grandpa about whether or not I was going to hand out Halloween candy. He thought it must cost a fortune in the city. And I said not really lots of parents go to malls and shopping centers for trick or treating now. So he told me about living down near 32nd and Webster in the 1960s, he had brought home several boxes of giant red apples from eastern Washington, really big nice ones and handed them out instead of candy. He said pretty soon KVI got word of it and announced on the radio that a guy in West Seattle was giving out really fancy apples and pretty soon his whole street was blocked with all the people and cars coming to get apples! I thought oh grandpa, I’m sure you’re exaggerating (he’s 81) and talked to my mom about it today. She said he was quite sharp on a ride to a recent family gathering and I said yeah he told me about Halloween in West Seattle but I was thinking he was exaggerating a bit… My mom just laughs and says THE APPLES! They were huge!! Even though she was a kid she remembered how many people were streaming to the door for apples.

Anyway, tis the season, and while I probably won’t be handing out apples, I thought I’d share maybe some of you WS long timers got an apple from my Grandpa way back when. :)

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[miws]

Thanks for sharing this great story and memory, tricky!

I wouldn’t have been one of those kids, as I lived at 38th & Manning, so probably just stuck to that general neighborhood.

Mike

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[JanS]

in my ‘hood, when my daughter was little, we always avoided one house on the block. Seems the older woman who lived there always handed out apples, too….ones that she had picked up off the ground in her back yard, most of them not fit to eat…ewwwww :-

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[seaopgal]

Now I have this terrible sad image in my head of an old lady doing her best to treat the children in her neighborhood and wondering why they didn’t come to her door :(

We had a few neighobrs that gave out apples, but my two most memorable were the family that put full-size candy bars on a tray and let you choose one and the lady who made pretty colored popcorn balls. Mass-produced minibars can’t complete …

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