Flops and the Halloween Meatballs

 

What do you do when it's 7:30 on Halloween night and there's a line of hundreds of kids in costumes at the door and you've run out of candy?

If you're my grandfather, Dick Tramonti, circa 1963, in a neighborhood full of trick-or-treating kids in Rhode Island, you take a small meatball that you've made for dinner, wrap it in a napkin, and put it inside a kid's candy bag while surreptitiously grabbing a handful of the kid's candy from their bag to give away to the next few kids. 

Once you've run out of stolen candy, you simply put another meatball in a child's candy bag and steal some more candy out for the next trick-or-treaters.

My mom estimates at least 12 kids went home with meatballs in napkins that Halloween.