There's something to be said about Hallowe'en candy, and that is, that of it which I remember was largely crap.

Now, that could be that my tastes in candy were -- and still are -- somewhat limited (I don't like licorice flavor, I'm very specific about mints, and I can smell -- and taste -- the plastic wrappers used on the "fun size treats" that make up most Hallowe'en candy assortments). Out of two or three pounds of candy, there were maybe a dozen fun-size or miniature chocolates of varieties I liked, another two dozen candies I tolerated, and a whole bunch of stuff you couldn't pay me to eat if I were desperate. (As November dragged on, I grew increasingly desperate. Still, I'm pretty sure we discarded half my haul.) Most of that was the sort of thing that old people (read: usually over 50 years old, who lived through the Great Depression) kept in their living-room candy dishes "for company" -- individually-wrapped Starlite Mints from Brach, black and yellow wax-paper-covered taffies, odd butterscotch- and root-beer-flavored hard-candies and chews, and pretty much anything that could stay in a bag, wrapper, or warehouse for almost-forever without doing anything more than smelling (and tasting) stale, like an old person's living room rank with musty room freshener, mustiness, old leather, and the ever-lingering scent of the wool pile rugs and itchy wool velvet sofas.

Beyond those first few dozen candies of interest, it's hard for me to see what might cause anyone to want to binge on the majority of what passed for Hallowe'en candy -- even a normally-candy-deprived child with diabetes.

For what it's worth, whichever neighbors did not use Hallowe'en as an opportunity to discard their stale "company" candy probably purchased the cheapest stuff they could find. From what I recall, it's what my parents did -- though I remember bags of individual packages of SweeTarts rather than Starlite Mints and Dubble Bubble Bubble Gum. I remember having so many packages of SweeTarts left over one year that my sister and I were still using them as counters for playing dreidel at Chanukah. By that time, they were so stale that even if I had liked SweeTarts, they would have been inedible.

So it's a bit strange that I'm waxing nostalgic for those stale, butterscotch-flavored taffies, Mary Janes, Fifth Avenue, and Bit O' Honey bars (though that may have something to do with looking back at a piece about those candies being showgirls, or vice-versa). Maybe it's because now I'm (just a few months) over 50. On the other hand, maybe it's just the distinctive smell of wool velvet. Or maybe I'm trying to remember what it was like to be that desperate for candy.

This year, though, we decided to not give out candy. We found some novelty items I've been told "the kids go crazy for", at less than half the price of cheap candy, instead. On the other hand, the doorbell did not ring all day. As for me, I spent much of last week baking and icing Hallowe'en cookies -- vanilla, gingerbread, and chocolate spice varieties. All with real sugar. Let's face it: I had to draw the line somewhere, and I did -- with a Wilton Number 2 round tip.