You can't cancel Halloween

Pandemic or not, Halloween marches on at Dream Park. Before we even turned the corner into October, neighbors were anxiously asking if The Halloween Guy was doing Halloween as usual. So he buckled down and got the decorations out there as early as possible to entertain the neighbors, and families, and dog-walkers that look forward to the display every year. 



The big inflatable Devil Dog breathed its last at the end of the last Halloween season, and as with all holiday decorations, there is no way to replace anything more than a couple of years old. Not a single Devil Dog to be found, but lo and behold, now there are Devil Cats! The head moves back and forth just like the dog. 


But the biggest change this year was the candy chute, as popularized on the Intertoobs. To keep traffic moving and encourage safe social distancing, Richard moved his perch down from the front porch to the first set of stairs. Our chute was 8 feet of black PVC pipe trimmed with orange duct tape. Several of the neighbors used lengths of rain gutter, which didn't look as cool but actually worked a little better. Hershey bars, Snickers, and Kit Kats flew down the pipe, but nut rolls, M&Ms and other candy that aren't as tightly sheathed in their paper wrappings tended to get stuck. 





The neighbors also closed off the block with dumpsters and yellow caution tape to open up the thoroughfare and reduce crowding. It worked great.  It was difficult to keep an exact candy count due to technical issues:  the frequent need to dispense extra candy to clear the chute and people (okay, mostly me) helpfully eating the problem candies to keep them out of the queue. So the actual number of trick-or-treaters is a rough estimate, but Richard thinks it was over 300, which is more than half the turnout in a normal year. 

Oh yeah - we were on TV!

A few nights before Halloween, WCCO did a little puff piece on Halloween traditions featuring a nice montage of local Halloween displays in the background. Our Dream Park display starts showing up about halfway through. You can see a nice array of Richard's hand-carved foam pumpkins and this year's new Devil Cat inflatable behind the anchor as she delivers random factoids about Halloween.

Here's a link

   
In unrelated news, Halloween this year was on a Saturday, a Blue Moon, the night that we said goodbye to Daylight Savings time, and our 40th wedding anniversary!