Home of Happy Squash
The best costume of the night was made by hand; pickup truck 88; a truck fashioned out of cardboard and painted, complete with headlights! Because of the logistics I could not get a picture.
These two (with their friend, and being photo-bombed by a sister) were second-best. They did the work themselves.
The artists, about to be photo-bombed
Generally, zombies and princesses duked it out for most frequent costume. I had at least 10 of each. For babes-in-arms, bees and butteflies were most common for girls, and several Godzilla/lizard costumes for boys. No cow costumes this year! What happened?
In the superhero category, Spiderman won handily. I lost count of how many of these I saw. Batman was a solid runner-up, mostly for the younger set. Captain America made an appearance, twice. Thor was not in my neighborhood last night. I guess that would be a difficult costume to carry off unless the hammer somehow doubled as your candy bag.
Among others:
6 Devils (all but one girls; pretty glamorous devils, too)
6 Cats – again, girls
6 Evil clowns
3 Werewolves
3 Gypsies
3 Gryffindor Girls
3 SF Giants
3 Court Jesters
3 fairies
1 Doctor Who
1 Hermione (more specific than the 3 above)
1 cheerleader mom
I had a “ gyptian,” (Egyptian); I had one goddess of Grecian descent (although she didn’t know which one, “Just a goddess,” she said).
These numbers are whimsical; when I had time I jotted them down but with several large crushes of kids I missed a lot of repeats.
The “kiddie pool.”
I gave away 56 books. This year I divided the boxes more clearly by age. The books were gone in the first hour. We had trick-or-treaters for about two.
“Hermione” above jumped up and down with joy when she heard she could take a book. She grabbed So You Want to be a Wizard, by Diane Duane, which seemed appropriate. A little later in the evening, a family group stood on the sidewalk, debating. The father was sure they had not been to our house. “Yes, we did,” the two kids said. Finally, the girl said. “She gave us books!” and I heard the boy say, “Here!” and I imagined him shoving his copy of an Animorphs book into Dad’s face. Dad; “Okay, you’re right; we’ve been there.”