Halloween 2013

 Halloween in Potato Land:        

This is how we do Halloween on our street.  You have seen the movies where the children are dressed in their cute costumes, pirates, princesses, ghosts and Dracula. The leaves gaily blowing around as the children run from house to house. There is always the evil person hiding behind a tree trying to scare the trick-or-treaters or bullies waiting to steal bags of candy.  Picture perfect. That would describe here, but it needs some serious modifications.  To begin with, this is Potato Land and October is the start of winter.  Most years it is cold, bitter cold, sometimes with snow.  The darling costumes are often covered with coats and jackets and the leaves are long gone. No one hides behind trees because it is just too cold and parents around here wouldn’t allow it.  There are plenty of spook alleys, haunted houses, and corn mazes to tour in the area if you are in the mood for a good scare. 

My street in particular can be very busy. There was a time when we had between 500 and 600 little and not so little ones knocking on our door.  At that time, we lived in one of the nicer parts of town with well-lit streets and nice sidewalks.  Our neighbor just happened to be the local Hershey representative/salesman and he gave out big chocolate bars.  You couldn’t get out of your driveway, and hoped there wouldn’t be an emergency because no help could get down the street which was a steady stream of cars following their children as they run from door to door, trying not to trip over their costumes.  The children seemed to come in droves with long periods of the door being wide open. 

Luckily it has slowed down.  The neighbor moved and there are other nicer parts of town.  Our street is still well-lit and with nice sidewalks so we get our fair-share of costumed children and teenagers; this year we only had about 250. There are even moments of large groups of trick-or-treaters looking for a yummy treat.

This year we grew some large pumpkins, one weighing in at 64#s and another at 53#s.  It was a major process to carve them.  The seeds and guts weighed about 15# for each.  We always get complements on them.  That may be because so few of our neighbors (we are an aging neighborhood, few little ones anymore) still carve them.  Sorry no pictures of these monsters. 

We are not picture perfect, but our Halloweens are busy.  I walked about a mile to and from the front door.  I am exhausted.