Halloween

Today, October 31st, 2012, is Halloween.
And I am totally unprepared for it.
We don’t get trick-or-treaters out here.
Even when my wife was alive, we’d never get anyone.
I’d carve jack-o-lanterns and put them outside our garage people-door, and purchase candy to give out.
In case anyone showed up.
We’d leave the light on at that people-door, but no one ever did.
Well, once a few did, long ago, the neighbor’s children.
That family broke up and moved. They divorced.
Another time I heard trick-or-treaters out on the road in front of our house,
“Don’t go there,” one said. “They have a dog, and it goes bonkers.”
That’s called protecting the property.
While our house was being built, our contractor suggested an alarm-system.
I passed.
“Best alarm-system I ever had has four legs and barks,” I told him.
The trick-or-treaters were protected by a five-foot chainlink fence, but our ferociously barking dogs were trying to jump it.
I used to send the dogs out to greet the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They put the fear of the Lord into ‘em.
Now that my wife died, I barely exist — although perhaps more so than a few months ago.
Preparation for Halloween has been nil.
I’m depending on prior experience: the fact we never got anyone in the past.
My aging neighbor doesn’t do anything, so I won’t either.
But for Christmas I hope to put up our electric candles.

• RE: “Out here.....” —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• RE: “Even when my wife was alive.....” — My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• RE: “While our house was being built....” —We designed our house and had a contractor build it back in 1989.