I used to love Halloween. My kids would dress in theme costumes and we’d head out into our neighborhood, Durham’s Trinity Park, to meet, greet and scare up treats. The haunted house that used to be an annual affair on Watts Street is long gone. But I still think if there were a prize for the best trick-or-treating street in America it would be Monmouth Avenue.
The kids are grown now and, after several years of doing the treat thing, I now keep the light off. Blogger extraordinaire James Lileks sums up why. I have no desire to:
… answer the door every 97 seconds and drop candy into the bags of kids who couldn’t say “thank you†if you spotted them the Ank and the Ou.
A lack of thank yous was the least of the indignities visited upon me in Halloweens past. Young men of shaving age who scowled at my mini Milky Ways, and chauffeured goblins whose parents refuse to actually, you know, walk with their kids, are not what Halloween is supposed to be about.
