Putting up Holiday lights in October. I suspect there will be a few others out there doing that today. Why wait till the snow flies? Other decorations will wait, though. We still have to get through Halloween.
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Driving around yesterday, I couldn't help but notice all the houses covered with spider webbing with ghosts dangling from porches and pumpkins everywhere. It seems despite the bad economy the poorest of neighborhoods manage to be festive for Halloween.
I don't get any Halloweeners, and it is kind of sad. When I was a kid we all went around here....hitting all the local streets and trying to make it up the big hill after that to even more streets before "time ran out" and Halloween was over. Porch lights went out, and you had to go home with your flashlight lugging a pillowcase or plastic pumpkin or whatever you had to put all the candy in.
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Now parents drive kids to better neighborhoods for better candy. I know people in the city who get hundreds of kids....from all over the place. It has become a financial burden if you want to have enough for everyone. That was never what it was about. It was about having FUN. See your friends and neighbors...sharing a good time. And Aunt Millie was always the last house when all the porch lights were going out. Because she wanted the kids to come in and sit down, have a treat, something to drink, and get out of the cold for awhile. She always made cookies. And you had to take your mask off if she couldn't guess who you were. Because she wanted to know...in a friendly way...so she would know that Frankenstein was so and so's kid, or perhaps
she wanted to know whose mother could sew that impressive bird costume.
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And safety is much more on the minds of parents these days, too. Can't really let the kid go out alone with other kids in the dark to roam the neighborhood anymore. Megan's Law Sex Offenders, meth houses and gun totin' drug dealers get a lot of publicity these days. And some communities just do away with trick or treating hours altogether in favor of a neighborhood or church party instead. Which is nice..... but...it can't match the Halloweens in my mind...back when the neighbors and I would run house to house in the dark with flashlights and pillowcases...casting furtive glances around us to glimpse other kids dressed as zombies or hobos...and little witches with green faces and long underwear under their clothes.
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