Trick or Treat (1938)

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   Greetings from "Death Valley" here at the NYU Bobst Library.
  FOR GOD'S SAKE, KIDS, DON'T JUMP!  THAT'S INSANE!  THE STOCK MARKET'S GOING UP!!!!!

   The ProQuest LOS ANGELES TIMES is now at July 1939, and not a moment too soon for Halloween is perhaps the origin of "trick or treat."
   It's a little long, but I'll type the whole thing.



HALLOWEEN PRANKS PLOTTED BY YOUNGSTERS OF SOUTHLAND
              Los Angeles Times (1886-Current File).       Los Angeles, Calif.: Oct 30, 1938.                   p. A8 (1 page):
_GETTING IN PRACTICE FOR NIGHT OF FUN_
(Photo--ed.)
(Photo caption--ed.)  Elio Martini, left, and Wendy Rough tie bicycle to post as prelude to Halloween.
_HALLOWEEN PRANKS PLOTTED_
_BY YOUNGSTERS OF SOUTHLAND_
   "Trick or treat!" is the Halloween hijacking game hundreds of Southern California youngsters will play tomorrow night as they practice streamlined versions of traditional Allhallows Eve pranks.
   The preparations are simple: a bar of soap, some old films and a couple of Times funny papers clipped into confetti.  From house to house the boys and girls will travel, punching doorbells with nerve-jangling peals.
_TINY GOON SQUAD_
   "Trick or treat!" is the terse command as the householder peeks warily around the door.  "If you don't give us something, we'll play a trick on you.  You wouldn't want your porch littered with paper, or your windows soaped, or a smelly roll of burning film left around, would you?"
   So the diminutive Halloween goon squads are bought off with cookies, candy, tickless alarm clocks or the price of an ice cream cone.
_SIGNBOARDS TARGET_
   With election but a week away it will be a field night for the Halloween billboard artists.  The more subtle pranksters already have spotted all the wind socks in their vicinity and are stuffing shirts with rumpled papers, ready to be judiciously affixed to candidates' signboards.  Where no wind socks are available, a well blown-up paper bag will make an acceptable substitute.  Less imaginative of the costumed prowlers Monday night will be content to change the benign expressions of the pictured candidates with ferocious mustaches and beetle-browed frowns.
_FEW GATES LEFT_
   Although there are few gates available for modern city boys to perch on rooftops, loose kiddie cars and motor scooters can be hitched to doorknobs, trash baskets can be emptied on front lawns and flower pots can appear on chimneys.  Portable (Next column--ed.) signs that unwary filling station proprietors forget to take in always make good decorations for streetcars and city halls.
   The automobile will be subjected to unusual hazards Halloween night.  If the windows escape a few "nerts" and "foos" scrawled in soap or paraffin, the owner is sure to find a shirt clothespinned to the radio aerial or a stack of tin cans tied on the axle.
_DUMMIES PREPARED_
   Of course, Halloween funsters are even now fixing lifelike dummies to be placed on busy thoroughfares just to give motorists a bad half-minute or to send police with sirens screaming to "investigate a dead body."
   Pumpkins will never lose their appeal for the very young at Halloween time.  Although some of the jack-o'-lanterns now are lighted with flashlights and even wired for sound, most of the faces stick to the traditional toothy grins and triangles for eyes and noses.
   It's a grumpy citizen indeed that won't be frightened into shrieks at the appearance of a little imp on Halloween night, attired in a spooky costume and carrying a lighted pumpkin and a rattling chain.


("Nerts" and "foos"?...Greenwich Village has a big party.  For something really scary, dress up as a Chicago Cub--ed.)