Another Halloween in Smootville

It's not even Halloween yet, but the fun is over in Smootville.  I think there's some sort of law saying that we're not allowed to have Trick-or-Treat on the actual night of Halloween.  And it definitely can't be held on a Friday night in the fall, because of the weekly religious holiday around here (high school football).

So we had Trick-or-Treat last night.  For the first time, we allowed Little Smoot to just head off with one of her friends.  This time I didn't get to play the part of the Creepy Protective Parent Hiding in the Bushes while the kids go from door to door.  You see them lurking in the shadows when handing out candy, eyeing you suspiciously as though you're the one responsible for all the stories about razor blades being found hidden in apples, or whatever.

I always debate whether or not I'm going to decorate the house for Halloween for Trick-or-Treat night.  It's pretty much a futile effort for a couple reasons.  For one thing, we typically don't get very many kids down this way.  The way our road is situated, a lot of the kids wind up turning on a side street and they never get down this far.

And it's hardly worth trying to compete with some of our neighbors who apparently spend every last bit of their paychecks on Halloween stuff.  We have seen people renting hearses, and this year there were at least two people dressed as Jason, chasing people with chainsaws.  One guy had so many strobe lights that he had to notify the Federal Aviation Administration.

I usually bring out my old DJ light show and spooky music, along with a strobe light and some other decorations.  I found that the smoke machine actually helps draw kids here from further up the street.  If you've ever seen a fire at a building, you know how many people rush to the scene to gawk at it.  I figure if people see smoke, they might think that they're going to get to see an actual fire, so they are naturally drawn to it.  It seemed to work last night -- we had far more people than usual at the door!

Having relatively few kids show up isn't really a bad thing.  I have lots and lots of extra candy to eat now!