1992: The Year I Lost Halloween and Was Devastated

I was 9 years old in 1992 when Halloween was taken away from me.  It was punishment for getting into some serious trouble. 

I had just turned 9 years old and I was an active kid riding my bike all around the little town of Biwabik, MN.  I actually had a "boundary" my parents had set up for me on how far I could go.  My friends Andy & Ben and I hung out quite a bit and would go on adventures... sometimes that involved getting into trouble and once going beyond my boundary.  But that's not it.  (Disclaimer:  I was the youngest one of the group, so I didn't know any better.)

One day in mid October we found ourselves hanging around the railroad tracks where iron ore pellets were shipped from the mines to Duluth.  One of us had the idea to put some pennies on the tracks so when the train came by, we could see them flatten the penny.

We would sit and wait for a train, hiding in the bushes.   The train would go by, and we would go check the pennies.  It was really cool to see them flatten out.  Wow, this was a blast!

The next day we went back to the same spot, but this time we put rocks on the track.  We hid again, waiting for the train.  It came by screaming fast and the rocks exploded into dust!

Being an adult now, I know this could have gone bad from this point.  As a kid I didn't know, we thought a train would cut through anything.  So we went even further, now piling some other junk scraps on the tracks the next day.

The train came by, but this time we heard something different:  brakes squealing.  The train came to a stop right in front of us and the conductors starting yelling at us.  "We're calling the cops!"  "What are you kids doing?"

It hadn't occurred to me that this was that serious until this point.  We could have derailed that train.  This was bad.  We were so lucky that the train stopped, and I still feel horrible about it.  The cops were on the way, which incidentally happened to be my step dad.  Small town, right?

So there we were: 3 kids sitting in the back of a squad car bawling our eyes out.  We sat at the station for a while waiting to see if we were going to be charged and shipped off.   They were lenient with us, knowing we were just some dumb kids making some dumb choices.

My mom was not so lenient.  I was grounded for a month, and that Halloween was taken away.  The ordeal hit me so hard that the next year I didn't even feel like trick or treating, and never did again.

So moral of the story kids: keep your nose clean around Halloween, or you may lose it too!