Trick-or-Treating With El Hornet of Pendulum

I grew up in Australia, and they didn’t really do Halloween at all there. But one year, when I was about 12, my friend and I decided that we would try to profit from this candy-giving tradition. So we dressed in very poorly constructed zombie costumes and took to the streets of our neighborhood with pillowcases and eggs. This was an entirely alien concept to most people living in my hometown of Perth. I can remember only one group of kids ever knocking on our door on Halloween, and we had nothing for them. My friend and I were making the rounds of our suburb and were having no success at all. Most people who answered their door were annoyed that we had interrupted dinner or whatever TV show they were halfway through. Our calls of “trick or treat!” were generally met with “go away” or having the door shut in our faces. We used the eggs.

But then we struck gold… and silver too.

Knocking at an entirely normal house on an entirely normal street, we waited and waited and heard crashing and banging and swearing. The door was flung open, and we were greeted by a sweaty, half-naked and slightly confused man who seemed annoyed at the sight of two young lads standing in his doorway with the most pathetic homemade costumes you could imagine.

“I lived like a king for the remainder of ’88, and I’d like to thank whatever Halloween is supposed to represent for that.”

We burst into our call of “trick or treat!”—to which the man replied, “Oh bloody hell.” This seemed like progress, in a way, because it appeared this man actually knew what that meant. He looked around the entrance of his home, searching for something he could give us to send us off into the night. Finding nothing, he grabbed a jar containing a bunch of coins. “Just take this and go,” he said and dumped the contents of the jar in the pillowcase I was holding.

This was unexpected; I anticipated sugar. I thought we were going to get chocolate, licorice or jellybeans. It was not to be. We walked off into the night and stopped at a nearby park to count our bounty. This took some time. Forty-seven dollars. Forty. Seven. Dollars. This was the largest amount of my own money I had ever possessed. Even splitting it 50/50 with my best friend meant I’d walked away with over 20 bucks. A game at my local arcade was 20 cents. An ice cream was 50 cents. Small candies were 1 cent each, and the really, really expensive ones were 5 cents. I lived like a king for the remainder of ’88, and I’d like to thank whatever Halloween is supposed to represent for that.

Sketch by BassGeisha

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