Halloween

 

We had a fun Halloween with three of the four daughters and their families trick-or-treating in Fincastle with us. Our little town goes big on Halloween! The old Fincastle Baptist church is a residence now and the owners always have fun props for Halloween. This year, the bell tower was lit up in spooky colors. Sometimes there are ghosts or bats flying up there too and one year they had an antique hearse parked out front. 

The annual Halloween festivities always begin with everyone gathering in the courthouse square at 5:30pm. Each year, our town sheriff  dresses as Woody from "Toy Story". At 6:00pm he makes an announcement to officially begin the trick-or-treating. With his go-ahead, everyone pours down Main Street and then scatters throughout all the side streets. We made a point to stop at friend Karen's house and friend Eleanor's house. Unbeknownst to me, Steve went inside Eleanor's house inside to say hello to Eleanor's husband. Apparently he sat down and stayed a spell because at that point we lost him as the rest of us continued on our way trick-or-treating. 

As we walked along, a friend came up to us and told us about a very special house about a block away, at the top of the hill. They encouraged us to go up there because there was a scary maze, free light sticks, and full sized candy! Of course we had to see for ourselves! Sure enough the place was all rigged out. There was an animated monster rock and roll band, a scary maze, costumed monsters, and full sized boxes of candy. It was dark and very hard to tell the dummy monsters from the live ones. I got spooked twice and screamed in fright, much to my kids' delight.

 Somehow we all managed to find each other an hour later at St. Mark's church on the other side of town . No small feat considering Steve had no phone on him and it was pitch dark. St. Mark's always opens their fellowship hall with hot dogs, lemonade, and other snacks, all for free or donations. It is also a good place to warm up if the holiday turns out to be chilly.

Since Claire's family drove into town to spend the weekend with us and to come trick-or-treating we all headed back to our house. The three grand kids dumped their candy out onto the dining room table. They spent some time sorting and admiring all the candy. I caught Matthew before he emptied out his bag so I could weighed it. It weighed 4.8 pounds! I told them my childhood story of Halloween. I told them that knew every year I would get thirteen pieces of candy. They asked how I knew that. I told them I lived on a dead-end street out in the country. There were thirteen houses, which always meant thirteen pieces of candy. It was always great fun and I have happy memories of Halloween, the fallen leaves, the early darkness, and the chill in the air.