When I was a kid, Halloween was always great fun but was a one day deal. (well two, because you had to eat all that left over candy the very next day before your siblings took it) But no more, no less. It was a two day sugar fest. Of course as a kid you looked forward to it for weeks, had that costume your mom bought you at the local A&P on grocery day, made of flammable material with a hard plastic mask held on by a stretchy string going around the back of your head and basically suffocating you throughout your journey around the neighborhood.
Talk about a good time. (adult sarcasm)
By the time you got to the first house you were already huffing and puffing behind the mask, snot running down your nose because it was hard to breathe through two punched out holes the size of lady bugs and eye holes on a mask that didn't line up with the ones on your actual face and were even harder to see out of.
Once again, fun times. (total eye roll and chuckle from me at the age of sixty four) But boy oh boy did we love it.
The past two years we have volunteered to help with the neighborhood Halloween party. My kids are too old to Trick or Treat but don't mind helping make it fun for the kids still roaming our streets and living in our hood.
Throw a neighborhood party at the park in our neck of the palms and almost everybody shows up. Halloween, Christmas, Chili Cook Off in January, Easter Egg hunt, Memorial Day, fishing tournament for Father's Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day....rinse and repeat.
Not a bad place to live.
Oh we rocked it this year. When putting all the empty tubs back into the storage shed at the park after getting all the decorations out, we came across a ghoul about twelve feet long. Battered, obviously at least a decade old and kinda not in the best of shape. I told my daughter to take it to the front of the park entrance and hang it up high enough where you couldn't see how beat up it was but would be great to see from afar.
She came back from the entrance less than five minutes later and suggested running it up the flag pole by the lake.
Talk about perfect!
It was nice to see so many happy, fun loving kids...just being kids and all getting along.
All monitored by adults but given the reign to just be kids.
These are unfortunately divisive and tumultuous times in our world, our country and even our own communities.
I know our views don't always align with a majority of the neighbors we live around but we strive to be good stewards, neighbors and friends you can rely on. And on the flip side, they have never let us down. Not once.
I think this country could learn a lot from the people living here in our little hidden hamlet, inside a nature preserve, scrambling to keep it out of the hands of bulldozers and deep pockets of developers.
As John and Paul put it (Beatles not Apostles)
"COME TOGETHER, RIGHT NOW...OVER ME"
Think about it.
Politicians are not our friends. Ballots are.
