Several weeks ago, I went to Columbia to see my mother. We drove to the neighborhood where she and my father paid off a mortgage on a brick house, convinced some grass to grow out of the sandy soil and raised three children.

Mama had told me that a much larger and fancier house had replaced the house at 333 Laurel Springs Road. Sure enough, when we drove up the street and stopped at the appropriate address, there was a big, new house. Not the benign split-level that I called home.

Gone.

And so was a place called The Triangle.

The Triangle was a triangular piece of property in the center of our neighborhood. Three roads went around it, forming the geometric shape of a scalene triangle. No equal sides and no equal angles, an orphaned piece of property that the children of that neighborhood adopted with a fierce determination.

Bill, Charlie, Cynthia, Kenneth, Julia, Robert, Sharon and I played baseball there. A baseball glove served as first base; an azalea bush, second; a tall pine tree, third; anything we could find for home.

We rode our bikes there, and we sat in a dogwood tree where we discussed matters of utmost importance: the crazy lady across the street; the latest flavor Icee; the girl up the street who was a sissy and not suitable for our shenanigans.

And, along about late September, we discussed Halloween. What we would be, where we would go, how much candy we would collect, how we would stay out all night in our endeavor.

Those were the days when children marched through neighborhoods in ragtag costumes, rang doorbells and waited with brown paper bags opened wide. Parents never accompanied us. We were never warned about candy that might be tampered with. We simply were on our own to make the most of the evening at the end of October.

So it was sad to see the old house at 333 Laurel Springs gone. It was sad to see The Triangle turned from a scruffy gathering place into a beautified, landscaped spot.

And it’s sad to see what’s happened to today’s Halloween.

Way too much planning and parenting goes into it, if you ask me. But that’s the way it has to be, for safety’s sake.

And then there’s the demise of Spooktacular, AnMed Health’s annual Halloween event in Anderson. A politically correct news release recently announced its end.

“While the original objective of Spooktacular was to provide a safe and healthy trick-or-treating environment for children, we feel that the event is no longer meeting that objective.”

According to a news story, the news release “also stated that safety concerns, brought on by large crowds, as well as community feedback related to the harmful effects of candy on children’s health, led officials to cancel the event.”

Geez Louise and hand me a Baby Ruth bar. Halloween just haint what it used to be.