I believe there are few if any true communities left in America. But that doesn’t mean the slate has been wiped completely clean. Many aspects of community still remain, more in some places than others. And in my Baltimore neighborhood, Halloween is a night when there is genuine interaction among many residents, as hundreds of kids and some of their parents storm through the streets. There are costumed kids by the score, and a goodly share of people open their homes to hand out the sugar-coated bounty. But in some ways, the success of my neighborhood in acting like a real, honest to goodness community on this one day a year says less about my particular neighborhood than it does about so many places where Americans live; lively trick or treating on my street, as much as anything, is a reflection on how it comes up short in other nearby neighborhoods and suburbs. For example, it is not lost on anyone that in this largely white neighborhood, about half the trick or treating children are black. Why do they come here, to a part of town that was notorious among old Baltimoreans as being one of the more racists spots on the local map?
Well, thankfully, things have changed, and this place is much more welcoming than it used to be. And a big part of it is that I’m just one block from this, a group of homes that goes enjoyably over the top from Thanksgiving-New Years, and puts on a mighty fine show for 
Halloween as well. Another reason is that my neighborhood is generally considered “safe,” despite the random assortment of lowlifes and hoodlums that back in the `70s we would’ve referred to as “hustlers, pimps, and pushers.” So part of it is just circumstantial. But a lot of it is that most of the neighborhoods and suburbs where some of these kids are coming from, be they modest and urban or well-to-do and tree-lined, aren’t pulling it off; the black kids are the obvious munchkin migrants, but there are plenty of white kids visiting too. In other words, my neighborhood is a magnet for these kids because it’s one of the few places around the area where trick or treating is still a viable and thriving activity. How many times are you going to watch your kid pound on a door and get no response before you realize this place just ain’t happenin’?
Handing out some candy to costumed kiddies one night a year: why are so many urban neighborhoods and suburbs incapable of even this one small gesture to community 
interaction? Simple answers to that question won’t do. It’s not enough to point out that some children are coming from neighborhoods that are considered unsafe when there are also kids from middle class suburbs showing up. And in fact, many of the city kids who come over here aren’t from ravaged slums (though Baltimore does have those), they’re from decent working class and middle class neighborhoods. The vast majority of little visitors and their parents aren’t fleeing neighborhoods that are unsafe; they’re just leaving behind neighborhoods and suburbs that are coming up short.
The truth is that in much of America, many historical forces, ranging from the economic to the cultural to everything in between, have gutted communities and severed the social relationships that define them. As time marches on, fewer and fewer people still have a sense that it’s important to hand out candy to kids on the 31st simply because that’s what’s expected of you by the people you live 
among, and if you don’t, they’ll think poorly of you, and you really don’t want that. Instead, the fact that so few people bother to engage the process is symptomatic of individualism, isolation, alienation, and frayed social relationships. What are you going to do on Halloween? Whatever the hell you want, most likely. Maybe you’ll go to a party with other adults. Maybe you’ll ignore it altogether and go out for dinner and a movie. Or maybe you’ll turn off your lights, go upstairs, watch TV, and pretend there aren’t children knocking at your door. Most people are simply going to do what they want, not what’s expected of them, because they don’t live in a real community where relationships are mutually binding, and where expectations are serious and have real consequences.
In the last post I said, “I wouldn’t go so far as to call my Baltimore neighborhood a full-on community.” While many of the attributes we might associate with an actual community are 
missing, it does retain a few, and on Halloween at least, it’s able to impersonate one reasonably well. Of course, no one would actually say anything to me if I didn’t hand out candy, and truth be told, even here we’re a distinct minority of the houses. Even here, arguably the trick or treat epicenter of a major American city, any real sense of community is gutted, expectations and binding social relationships are minimal or non-existent, and individualism and alienation run amok. But in the land of densely packed row houses, we givers-of-candy do achieve a critical mass, and so kids come, as if summoned by a pied piper wielding a Marathon Bar instead of a flute.
So what am I gonna do this Halloween? Damn straight I’m givin’ them candy. And of 
course doing so doesn’t make me better than anyone (except in the eyes of those devilish little kids). But it does connect me to people, both those who live in my neighborhood, and those who wish they did this one night a week.
So far I’ve got Tootsie Rolls, Blow Pops, Milky Ways, and Jolly Ranchers. That’s just a start; I’ll need several hundred pieces to get through the night, so more shopping awaits. And if I come up short, you won’t hear me bitching if I have to pull the TP down from my porch. Trick or treat, baby. Expectations are real, and a deal’s a deal.