Un-hallowed eve

I really feel sorry for people in those American “key battleground states” inundated with advertising and spin, an onslaught rivalling Hurricane Sandy. Apparently some locals on Cape Cod also feel like mocking the election:

 

And here is what the whole display looked like:

This wasn’t a pure mocking of the American election. In Chatham, MA,  New England, I came across a whole central park of Hallowe’en displays. Some would definitely make little ones nervous:

advertising the bakery, or an advocacy ad to deter children from eating deserts??

This display featured Chatham Sea Dog who found, on his travels, lilli-pumpkins:

The whole park had a stroll of displays:

At first I thought this was a great community building exercise. But when I thought some more, I realized the housing density in the area was so very low, with most homes on lollypop cul-de-sacs, houses spaced at least 150′ apart, with no street lighting (boy, was it dark at night) and sidewalks as rare as the blue moon … how could one possibly take the little tykes door to door trick for treating? And being Cape Cod, at least half the houses are empty in the winter.

The answer came on Saturday, October 27th, when the main drag was closed for a tractor-drawn wagon parade, with the kids walking two blocks or so, in costume. Merchants stood outside their shops filling the loot bags of passersby. All at 2 o’clock on a sunny Saturday afternoon. And yes, there were some adults in costume.

I guess on Hallowe’en itself, the little ones are indoors watching Charlie Brown and the Pumpkin Patch.