Boo! (cough, cough)

Last night, I put some bags of candy outside on a card table with a sign, "Please take one." I went back outside at 8:00 and not one bag had been taken. I didn't hear any kids going up and down the street in front of my house, like there usually are on Halloween.

Did you have trick-or-treaters in your neighborhood, and if so, was it fewer than usual? Apparently, in my neighborhood, even though this is Trumper Town, parents just didn't feel that it was safe enough to have their kids go from door to door. I imagine, though, that in the redneck Trumper states, it was Halloween as usual, without masks.

We've had very few in 2-3 years.  We turned off outside lights.  Heard nothing from outside, no doorbell rings, no cars, no kiddies giggling as they would pass by.

Saturday night is pizza night for us.  But our oven took a dive a few days ago.   We decided to treat ourselves to fried chicken and all the fixin's, sit down about 8 pm and watch Beetlejuice or some other movie as we ate. 

I sailed out about 3 pm to get chicken and fixings from Walmart, warm it all up at dinner time.  Really smart plan, I thought.  Get it before the rush, not really thinking there would be a rush at all, let alone 3 pm..

Hmmm.  Chicken sold out at Walmart.  So I headed to KFC...haven't had KFC in maybe 30 years. 

Whoa!  KFC was mega surrounded by cars (you can't go inside) waiting in line. 

So I detoured to Churches Chicken, just down the street.  Whoa!  Surrounded even worse. 

I turned around, and passing KFC again miraculously the 'line' was reasonable.  Determined to have fried chicken I waited patiently in the long but doable line and got our chicken and fixin's.

BUT THEN, even stranger...all the way there and back I noticed long lines of cars, sometimes into the street, at about every church I passed.  This is 3 pm.  What the??  Maybe they were doing some sort of goodie bag give aways.  Drive through and get yours.  Or maybe those "Trunk OR Treat" events.  I just couldn't believe they were doing it so early in the day.  Smart actually.   Good for them if they were doing it to keep the kids safe while having something for them. 

Friends with grown children were making goodie bags for their grand kids, taking the bags and leaving on the porch, no close contact.  It is just almost impossible not to hug grandma and grandpa.

Years ago we'd enjoy the kids coming by, sometimes took polaroids of the ones in cute costume, etc.  Sometimes we would even dress up.   I'd cut eye holes in a sheet, swoop to the door making eerie sounds, husband would bang on the garage door howling like a banshee.  The kids shreeked and ran a little but mostly loved it. 

One year we were going to be away Halloween night.  We filled a big plastic pumpkin with GOOD candy, like Snickers and such, not that cheap awful stuff.  When we returned it was gone, pumpkin and all.  No surprise.  Some jerk just took it all.

Now we are just too old and tired to mess with it all.  This year the virus gave us a good excuse.

But what the heck is it with everybody wanting fried chicken on Halloween night?  Or maybe just because it was Saturday?

My only guess would be that whatever Halloween activities were still taking place, they would disrupt a normal family dinner and so, the "everybody grab a piece of chicken when you want it" approach was attractive. KFC, etc. are always good alternatives when you don't want to cook, and maybe shepherding the little goblins around was more than enough work for a lot of people.

Either that, or somebody posted a dire warning about a nationwide chicken shortage due to the machinations of the Deep State (which, as we all know, wants to take away our precious 93rd Amendment fried chicken rights) on Facebook, and what you saw was panic chicken buying.

I dumped two big bags of candy on a card table in front of my garage where I was watching netflix.    I think I had less than 20 trick or treaters for the 2 hour designated period.    One last group came with about 15 mins left  so I told them to take 3 big handfuls each...and they did.    I still had more than half my candy left.

That's funny, Kevin, "panic chicken buying."  

I think your first theory is right on.  Just a co-incidence for us, given that we'd normally have our usual pizza had our oven not crashed.  I'll have to test this hypothesis by doing another fried chicken run on a non-holiday Saturday, precisely at 3 PM.  I'll be mentally ready in case the crowds are similar.

But damn, it was good!

Candy

I didn't get any candy because I didn't think anybody would brave the pandemic in one of the worst-performing states in the country in the worst-performing area of the state. I turned the porch light off just in case. 

I had to run to the store at the last minute for supper and boy was I surprised. (My daughter informed me she threw all the crackers out because she thought they were stale, and I was making Chili.)  It was the busiest Halloween I have seen in years. There were wall to wall kids everywhere and they weren't going as family units. There were no masks other than the Halloween type.  I even saw a group of eight girls walking down the middle of the street dressed as Village of the Dammed kids matching platinum hair and all. They looked to be about 6th graders. 

I guess I may have been right, that the incidence of trick-or-treaters was directly correlated to the Trumpiness of a community. Trumpers are cool with putting their kids at risk, because the coronavirus is just a FAKE NOOZE liberal hoax. How do we know that? Trumpie-poo told us so!

The next thing I'm wondering about is how many people will be curtailing their Thanksgiving family gathering plans. Not many, I suspect, because like with Halloween, our need to have the fun we "deserve" outweighs any considerations of safety or responsibility.