I live in the burbs and we have not participated in Trick or Treat time in years (since our own kids got too old for it). We leave the porch lights off and kids/families know to skip our house. For a few years there, our entire street was dark and no one even walked our street. Dynamics have changed a bit as some folks moved away and young parents with kiddos have moved in, but I'm still not planning on answering the door tonight.
Only go to homes you know. That seems to be the rule now.
Friday was Beggar's Night, apparently. I had no knocks - in my 60-plus community, it used to be how the grandkids would make the rounds of Grandma's friends, an hour after supper. A card or porcelain pumpkin by the door indicated participants.
But I didn't hear ANY knocking this weekend. There were a few teens wandering around in what used to be called Goth makeup, and torn jeans...but I didn't see anything more imaginative. Part of it, I suspect, is that we've had a high turnover and a lot of funerals. Gee, how strange. We're about 90-percent Jabbed to schedule.
Halloween's become a comedown. When I was a rug-rat we had the run of six long suburban blocks, with a dark woods at the dead-end of one street. We had the run of it, and we'd be out till 11.
Of course, it was my generation that introduced malicious vandalism, too. Prior to that, it was pranks, like tipping outhouses or throwing toilet paper into trees. Political signs used to be big in our neighborhood, and out about that time - we'd pull them out and staple them upside down, or backwards so the white backing showed to the road.
Then came the leaf fires, the jack o'lanterns tossed into traffic in the road, and...down the highway, in Detroit...Devil's Night.
Now it's over. It's become a holiday for grownups; kids have enough real fears, given by their demented lesbian teachers. For me...Fright Night is every night, now that we're at a perfect storm of no borders, a 20-million invasion; Wiemar money-printing, the War On Farming...the Jab Campaign...endless gaslighting from media liars...and an installed puppet pResident who was a traitor even before going senile.
www.moongiant.com
