We just don’t have many kids in my area, so there’s no one to come by that isn’t headed to the “harvest festival” to avoid admitting they are celebrating Halloween.

Neighborhoods were once mixed in the US, but no more. The new “ghettos” may have been established for different reasons than the old, but they are ghettos none the less.

There are laws in some of the surrounding counties here that any registered sex offenders must turn off their outside lights by 6 pm on Halloween.

Since our neighborhood is – um – aging – and isn’t particularly affluent or densely populated, we never get trick-or-treaters any more. Everyone just turns off their outside lights at dusk.

Some parents must take a look at our street and think “My God! So this is where they all have to live…..”

The nearest thing to an old fashioned American Halloween was at the Asian restaurant on the other end of the street. Instead of kimonos most of the waitresses were dressed as witches.

I had occasion tonight to drive through West University Place, a small city-within-a-city just north of my neighborhood, just after dusk. Kids were trick-or-treating in the old-fashioned way, though with careful parental supervision. Driving was a bit frightening… the kids weren’t too careful about when they crossed streets… but I was reminded a bit of the old days. It’s wonderful what one can do when one has lots of money concentrated in a small area like WUP; I only regret that kids in the socioeconomic group I was raised in must now have their Hallowe’en goodies x-rayed for safety. And it’s been ages since anyone could confidently accept an apple or orange.

Photographer friend Catherine is in Mexico this week, photographing Day of the Dead observances. At least I don’t worry about her coming to harm while she is there, or being arrested for taking pictures, as she probably would be here.

See, I would get into trouble with costumes, because I would put on a wet suit and go out as a Repub preacher, but that’s a local scandal.

That horse thing never works out for long, it’s just too hard to keep it up when you are walking a neigh-borhood.

Cheers to the Halloween of 40 years+ ago. I can’t say it was my favorite holiday, though I always fumed that we didn’t get the next day off from school (while my Catholic school friends did).

And cheers to mammas who put love into homemade costumes. I tried to follow that tradition with my own child, laboring over various Superwoman, princess, fairy, pumpkin, and Peter Pan creations.

My own childhood favorite costume was fashioned by my mother and my best buddy’s mother. We were a horse – I was the front end, LB was the hind end. It looked great, except we had to walk bent over at a 90 degree angle to make it work. After maybe three minutes the ‘horse’ became an upright-walking head and rear end.