It's Halloween--So It's Time for the Hayride!

I love following traditions that are always the same, year after year. Last night we joined our neighbors in a Deerfield Halloween tradition that's always fun--a hayride around the town in the back of farm wagons with kids in costume. Nathan was reluctantly dressed as an elephant. But he didn't want to put on the hat, so while his feet looked like elephant feet, his head popped out just normal.


We climbed into the straw-filled wagons and they

took off with a jolt, following a screaming siren-calling phalanx of police cars and fire engines. The procession wound its way around the town, delirously and joyfully loud, honking, sirening, whooping, past people who came out from their houses to wave. Some houses were decorated with the orange and blacks of the holiday, and some had trick-or-treaters standing in costume. One house on Graves St. had a row of about 10 lit pumpkins lining their front yard.

As I waved to my fellow Deerfielders, and they tossed candy over the rail to the scrambling kids, I felt a warm kinship--we celebrate this pagan holiday together, we wave because we're happy it's a warm fall night, we wave because--well, we're happy to be riding in the back of this wagon and that's what you do.