No trick-or-treaters. As usual.
Oct. 31st, 2006 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasI'm sitting on my front porch with my laptop on top of my lap, a jack-o-lantern on the porch railing beside me, a bag of candy at my feet. I'm wearing my Mad Scientist Local #42 lab coat, and have drawn a spiderweb and a spider on the left side of my face with eyeliner.
I've been sitting here for half an hour, and there have been no trick-or-treaters. There never are.
We live on Main Street, on the north side of town, and trick-or-treaters hit other houses on other streets nearby. But most of the trick-or-treating happens just east of here, and nobody trick-or-treats on the east side of Main Street, because all the houses are like two stories above street level -- you have to go up a couple flights of stairs to get to the lawn. If you live in a hilly-type urbanish or suburbanish area, you'll probably have some idea of the sort of thing of which I am speaking, and if not, you probably can't quite imagine it. Well, they're houses, with big stone walls, maybe almost a story high, which act as retaining walls for the lawn. There's a staircase up to the bottom of the lawn, and the lawn slopes up maybe another half-story or story or so, and then you go up a flight of stairs to the porch where the front door is.
So nobody goes there for trick-or-treating, because they don't want to deal with the stairs.
And I'm on the other side of the busy street from that.
So nobody comes here.
Still, every year, I carve a jack-o-lantern and buy candy, just in case. Sometimes I'll get one or two trick-or-treaters in the course of the evening. Sometimes not.
I've been sitting here for half an hour, and there have been no trick-or-treaters. There never are.
We live on Main Street, on the north side of town, and trick-or-treaters hit other houses on other streets nearby. But most of the trick-or-treating happens just east of here, and nobody trick-or-treats on the east side of Main Street, because all the houses are like two stories above street level -- you have to go up a couple flights of stairs to get to the lawn. If you live in a hilly-type urbanish or suburbanish area, you'll probably have some idea of the sort of thing of which I am speaking, and if not, you probably can't quite imagine it. Well, they're houses, with big stone walls, maybe almost a story high, which act as retaining walls for the lawn. There's a staircase up to the bottom of the lawn, and the lawn slopes up maybe another half-story or story or so, and then you go up a flight of stairs to the porch where the front door is.
So nobody goes there for trick-or-treating, because they don't want to deal with the stairs.
And I'm on the other side of the busy street from that.
So nobody comes here.
Still, every year, I carve a jack-o-lantern and buy candy, just in case. Sometimes I'll get one or two trick-or-treaters in the course of the evening. Sometimes not.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 12:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 12:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 12:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 12:58 am (UTC)Wife bought candy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 01:01 am (UTC)Is your Jack-O-Lantern visible from the street? I started getting lots of customers when I put mine high enough that you didn't have to already have decided to come up to the house in order to see it.
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Date: 2006-11-01 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 01:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 02:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 02:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 03:41 am (UTC)In an odd class-based observation, my father says that at his house, in an upper-middle-class part of San Diego, most of the trick-or-treaters are the children of the Hispanic maids and gardeners everyone employs. The neighborhood kids rarely, if ever, go trick or treating. And everyone makes a big deal of all the little Hispanic kids in their cute costumes; people almost compete to see who can give out the best "treats."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 04:08 am (UTC)One of my sweetest little neighbors was yelling trick or treat all the way up the walk, and as soon as he realized it was me, he bolted into my house yelling for the Guinea pig.
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Date: 2006-11-01 04:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 07:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 01:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-01 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-02 01:08 am (UTC)