(EDITOR'S NOTE: We lifted this article from a site we used to write for, and it dates back to 2012. "2012" explains why we planned to egg Taylor Swift's house, as she had then been smitten with Konnor Kennedy and had bought a house adjoining the Kennedy Compound. She has since divested herself from both entities.
Also, my kid was Wolverine that year, he's a stormtrooper this year.
The pictures in the article, aside from being Halloween-themed, have nothing to do with the story.
This article is the fourth installment in our Halloween Displays series, and the pictures come from Whitman, Hanson, Halifax, Plympton, Carver, Wareham and Plymouth.)
One way to make a childish activity fun for Mom and Dad is to use your child as the bait in a half-assed sociological experiment. This Halloween, we did just that.
He didn't care. He got to dress like Wolverine, and he hauled in enough candy to bring a dentist to climax.
The experiment was thus: Take a kid trick or treating in two neighborhoods of varying wealth, and try to take note of any differences that might make themselves apparent.
We had to choose two neighborhoods. Mommy had the Whammy, an absolute veto.... which eliminated Brockton, Roxbury, etc... and some pre-Halloween recon eliminated the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port when we found that no one but the staff was around there after Labor Day.
Let the record show that I would have had No Problem At All with egging Taylor Swift's house if she didn't show my people some proper confectionary love. Fortunately, it never came down to that.
The Kennedy logic also eliminated many of the marquee Cape Cod neighborhoods. We have nothing but love for Summer People, but they aren't of much use when you need candy in late October. Demographics are everything. We needed more of a bedroom community, and a wealthy one at that.
We narrowed it down to Jersusalem Road in Cohasset, and Washington Street in Duxbury. Even though Cohasset's main drag has more of a Gatsby feel, Duxbury had the advantage of centralized parking (we used what most locals still call "Sweetser's") and more occupied houses per square mile. The average house goes about a milly or so, and you can bang out a bunch of them without walking a costumed 10K.
As for our seedy site, we chose Wareham. We wanted to use Shangri-La, but the sidewalk/streetlight ratios didn't work out in favor of those with a wandering five year old Wolverine. We decided instead on a trailer park between Mazzilli's Farm Stand and Barnacle Bill's Seafood Shack. The double-wides are too tightly packed to get a car moving through at any kill-a-child speed, and we could do 50 units without any great hardship.
Your average home on Washington Street is owned by someone in the finance industry. Your average person in the trailer park works at Benny's or the Lobster Pound. The average salary on Washington Street is probably equal to the salary of 20 people in the trailer park. The average salary in the trailer park is probably half or a third of what the kid's car costs on Washington Street.
Does it matter? Does it translate into generous candy giving?
Due to us having to pick Mommy up in Sagamore at a certain time, Wolverine and I decided to start in the Wareham trailer park. We got out a little before dark, and we set right to our task. Wolverine (the Michigan yellow/blue Wolverine from the comics, not the leather jacket one from the movies) is five, cute, and fully invested in the candy acquisition process.
In case you think that this article is going to make fun of the poor... don't. Wareham came correct. I'm proud to say that every trailer we knocked on answered, and nobody came cheap with the goodies. Wolverine didn't have to disembowel anyone with his kid-sized adamantium claws due to Grinchy candy withholding.
The only standout facet was that some of the candy was of the cheap variety, a la individual Starbursts, Dum Dum lollipops, and the small solo generic Reese's cups with the gold foil. This was offset by the fact that they gave it out in great amounts. Besides, in this economy, and in that neighborhood, we should have been (and were) happy to get anything.
Some of the trailers were decorated, and some weren't. I may have seen 5 pumpkins... not bad, until you remember that the park is next to a farm stand. Hay bales, corn stalks, scarecrows and various gourds were easily available 20 feet away. I suppose that if a poor neighborhood has to skimp somewhere, they should skimp on decor rather than candy.
Finally, and this is important.... Wareham residents are cool enough to hook up the Elders with a beer now and then. One must be properly fortified when taking the kids about. I even was offered a bong hit, but that doesn't really count because I knew the guy. Either way, my bibulous handouts are important to me, I'm the judge/author, and they factor into the analysis.
I wasn't 100% shocked by the results. I had no concrete reason to think that Wareham would fail to be rewarding. Nothing really jumped out about the candy to cancel the theory one of my friends put forth that "Everyone shops at Wal-Mart."
We were working against the clock, so Wolverine and I hopped into the Benz a bit after sunset, picked up Mommy, and hauled our candy asses up Route 3 into Duxbury.
Now, the wealthy don't have all the advantages when being stalked by a trick or treat posse with a purpose. For instance, wealthy people's houses are farther apart than trailer park homes are. We probably covered 10 trailers in the time it took us to walk up the driveway of the first house we hit on Washington Street. For Duxbury to shame Wareham, the candy-per-step ratio would have to be amazing.
Also, Duxbury residents may or may not have been aware that they were a part of an experiment. They also most likely don't share my view of their role as Giver in the Redistribution Of Wealth theory I was aiming for, as they were more likely to assume that whoever was knocking on the door in costume was just another wealthy person from a nearby neighborhood.
I use the ambiguity because Washington Street has a go-to rep among local trick or treaters, and the residents there may feel an urge towards overkill. We were among 200 or so people trick or treating Washington Street during the hours that we were operating... not too shabby for a town with 15000 people at about 45% elderly.
Here's Duxbury, in a few bullet points.
- There were probably 50-100 yards between houses, if you count the walkways and so forth.
- Every door was opened by a grandparent or a trophy wife. There was one Yummy Mommy at the end of Fort Hill Road who actually could have not handed out candy and just used "You got to look at me up close" as an egging deterrent argument.
- I didn't think that people still put bags of candy unguarded outside of their door with a "Take One Per Person, Please" sign on it. People in 4400 sq. ft bayfront houses do, however.
- People hand out the full size candy bars in Duxbury. Those rich folk gave it up smooth.
- Not only do you get the name brand goods, but you also get the more rare stuff... Caramellos, Hilliards, Pop Rocks, Fun Dip, Flake Bars and so forth. You know... the good sh*t.
- No one handed out money, but it happened a few times during my youth in that area.
- Many residents had the same variety bowl of candy that the Wareham folks did, probably most.
- One house- and I swear I'm not making this up- had a video screen set up in front of the doorway. The homeowner was able to hide in the house and speak to us through the video screen, which showed a Grim Reaper sort of visage. The Reaper spoke whatever the homeowner said. He also had music going through a loudspeaker, which made his house sound like a nightclub from 100 yards away.
But wait...there's more.
He also set something up where horror film images were holographed onto the house itself, so you'd turn around and be facing a 15 foot Wicked Witch. To offset this, he had his daughter and MILF wife outside, distributing the actual candy.
I'd say he spent about $3500 or so on the electronics, and that may be a conservative estimate.
- Beers were not offered in Duxbury. This was not through rudeness. Every cop in Duxbury was on Washington Street, to the point where I would have been able to discharge firearms on other streets with total impunity had I chosen to do so. Public drinking was out of the question.
- People in Duxbury hand out toys, coloring books, Pez dispensers, crayons, toothbrushes, McDonald's coupons, cheap sunglasses and so forth.
Overall, I'd score them about equally candy-wise, with Duxbury enjoying a huge edge in decorations. Duxbury had enough people handing out full-sized candy bars to offset the greater distances between houses. Wareham people are giving enough by nature to offset the median household income differences.
Wolverine did ridiculously well. That bag of candy you see at the top of the article is what was left today, about five days after Halloween, after several sessions where the adults had at it, and after a children's birthday party. The goody bag was full enough that Wolverine was having trouble carrying it at the end of the session.
We'd have had more, but Wolverine likes lollipops. When offered a bowl full of large Snickers bars and lollipops, he'd grab 2 tiny lollipops instead. I actually had to intervene when he chose a Dum Dum pop over a full Milky Way bar... "He wants one of these, too."
I'm just happy that Trick or Treating hasn't faded away to oblivion like Christmas Carols or whatever. That day is probably coming, and the world will be less exciting when it happens.
