My son, Max, handed me the Tootsie Roll Pop and I fancied that I could feel my molars quivering in their fleshy sockets.

Among the categories of edibles, candy’s reputation as an assaulter of enamel is unrivalled.

(I contend candy is an actual food group but I notice that the nattering nabobs of nutrition refuse to give sweets the spot they so richly deserve on the food pyramid.)

But the Tootsie Roll Pop, I submit, constitutes a particularly dire, and possibly even unique, threat to dentition.

The confection’s hard shell is stout enough to drive nails. And as we learned from the wise owl in the classic TV commercial that debuted in 1970, nobody can resist crunching the shell, after a couple of token, tooth-protecting licks, to get at the Tootsie Roll inside.

Yet even if your teeth emerge intact from their collision, they are immediately confronted with the clay-like consistency of the actual Tootsie Roll.

And that stuff, besides being delectable, has more gripping power than whatever glue it was in those TV ads where a construction worker dangled from a steel girder, clutching his hard hat glued to the girder.

I’ve had only one tooth extracted, and I don’t recall that I ever detected the rich flavor of a Tootsie Roll during the process. But I can’t help but wonder whether dentists don’t on occasion mold a bit of the stuff around an especially stubborn bicuspid, just to get some extra leverage.

I acquired this particular Tootsie Roll Pop while strolling Mill Street, the main drag in Sumpter. The occasion was a trunk-or-treat event the afternoon of Oct. 24.

Max, clad in his Captain Jack Sparrow costume, had just added a handful of sweets to his sack when the proprietor offered him an extra lollipop.

She told Max to give it to his dad, who, she said, appeared to be shivering in the unseasonable October chill. The temperature was in the 30s but a brisk northerly wind was skimming leaves across the street.

I wasn’t particularly cold, beneath layers of fleece and goose down, but of course I accepted the candy.

(And well that I did; Max, immediately on returning home, rushed off to hide his bag of treats.)

I’m glad people put on the event in Sumpter. I feel the same about the trick-or-treating planned today from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the parking lot of The Sunridge Inn.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted changes to these and many other events, of course.

And I think these precautions are both reasonable and, indeed, necessary.

But I also believe it’s perfectly responsible to continue such traditions. There was ample space between the candy stations in Sumpter to allow groups of parents and kids to keep a respectful distance. Many people wore face masks, garments that, besides their benefits in keeping viruses at bay, were justified by the wind chill factor alone.

And of course everyone was out in the good clean air, where their lungs, at least, ought to have been in fine fettle.

Their teeth, perhaps not so much.

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In a few days we will find out what our future holds.

Well, sort of.

We might not actually know Tuesday night, as we usually do every 4 years, who has been elected as president.

The pandemic, by affecting the method by which tens of millions of Americans cast their vote (but not Oregonians, fortunately, as we’re old hands at dealing with mail ballots), could deny us the immediate answer to this crucial question.

But even if the outcome is certain that evening, we won’t actually know what we can expect for 2021-24.

Extreme partisans disagree, to be sure.

Depending on which exaggerated prediction you peruse, we will soon be living in a country dominated by left-wing zealots who yearn to control every aspect of our lives from cradle to grave, or else one ruled by right-wing zealots who don’t care if we’re destitute so long as their stock portfolio is on a steep upward trajectory.

Either way we confront the frightening prospect of an America we will scarcely recognize.

I don’t dispute that the Trump and Biden campaigns represent starkly different beliefs both about the role of government, and how its power should be wielded.

And the unique circumstances of 2020 — the twin upheavals of a pandemic and an invigorated social justice movement — have heightened this familiar ideological conflict in ways we haven’t seen in at least a couple of generations.

Yet ideology is not governance.

The American system, with its famous checks and balances, inevitably attenuates the extremes.

I believe that regardless of how the election turns out, our country will still be familiar next week and next month and on Inauguration Day in January.

Some of us will anticipate the future with enthusiasm and some with dread.

But so it has always been.

Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.