Boo!

Happy Halloween Everyone!

When I was a kid visiting my grandparents in Ewing, Nebraska at Halloween, my friend Leon and I would go trick or treating around the town of 500, and the towns population was always generous with their goodies for us little guys. As we got older, I heard stories of kids going outhouse tipping, and wondered why that idea had some sort of mean appeal to kids. Now I've also heard and seen picture of wagons placed on top of barns, school mascot statues being moved and placed in odd locations so pranks Halloween pranks were a big deal that involved a lot of work for the perpetrators.

City kids seem pretty mean spirited by comparison. Spray paint, eggs, rotten tomatoes, and bags of nasty stuff on fire at some peoples doors are the stuff of modern day big city pranks. It's not just the kids doing them either. I'm sure we'll either hear of, or read about tainted candy with needles, razor blades or who knows what else given to kids just trying to have fun.

Many communities in metropolitan areas have gone to "safe" Halloween festivities where the city provides the goodies so parents don't have to worry. Hospitals offer free X-Rays of kids candy to check for foreign objects, and there are almost always stories about some idiot driving down the streets with their headlights turned off hitting kids somewhere.

It's such a shame to me that a fun time can turn tragic by purposeful actions of a few. Tipping over an old outhouse sounds pretty tame compared to some of the stuff that goes on today, and I'm pretty confident that around southwestern Nebraska I won't be reading about such horrors.

On a lighter note, a recent trip through the big "discount" place on the west side of McCook found a candy isle with more different kinds of stuff than I had any idea were even made. A US Census Bureau report stated that Americans ate 24 1/2 pounds of candy per capita in 2007. Yikes! Me and Margie haven't eaten a total of 24.5 pounds of candy since we got married, let alone the 49 pounds we were "allotted" for just one year. So those of you eating our share, we want it back. We don't expect any trick or treators this Halloween being 4 miles out of town, but in case they show up, we might need it otherwise they might tip over the outhouse.