We had 26 trick-or-treaters.
That is a little below average for us, but could have been much worse.
It might have been less if we were not set up the way we were. We had a table in front of the house where we sat with the candy bowl so we could see people coming. We do this more to not have to keep opening and closing the door, risking escaped pets, but it works out.
As it is, we still really needed better lighting; our street is pretty dark.
Besides this, there were really only four houses lit up. When another neighbor came home, they said to tell trick-or-treaters to go to them, too (which we did), but they had missed the first part of the evening and their house was not obviously decorated.
This is a cul-de-sac of fifteen houses. There is an apartment complex and a subdivision with some townhomes nearby, but there are not sidewalks or really any road shoulders to speak of. Since the apartments and the townhomes went in, there is a lot of street parking, and there is not much street lighting.
This means that there can be some difficulty in getting to our street for children on foot. If only a third of the street is giving candy, why would we be a destination?
We were lucky that it was not rainy, though it was pretty chilly.
I started playing my Halloween playlist on my phone. I think this made our stop a little cooler, in a good way.
I was probably going to write about this anyway, but of the different conversations I have been seeing, one of them has been disappointment from a lot of people that they did not get more kids.
(It's not the only conversation, but hey, we have all week.)
Here's the thing: we love Halloween. We are excited to get trick-or-treaters. We want that to happen.
If we want that to happen next year -- and we could easily get rained out, it's too soon to predict that -- we would have to lay some groundwork.
We could get more lighting to help make us more visible.
We could get more outdoor decorations. We have some, but it doesn't compare to the inside of the house. That is not visible enough to draw trick-or-treaters.
Even more important, we should probably talk to neighbors. The others who give out candy, yes, but the especially the ones who don't.
Would they be interested in doing it? What reservations do they have? Can we help?
If there are people who aren't going to be home, that's okay, that happens. Could someone maybe take up position in their driveway?
I think I remember it usually being about 11 of the 15 houses giving candy when I was a kid, which we were fine with.
One thing that may be in our favor now is that there are more potential doors near our block with the new construction. It messes up the parking but there can be other benefits. There was a lot more empty space along the main road when I was a kid.
We might also want to look at more word of mouth. Tell your friends we are going to be handing out candy!
It would be a lot of work and it would involve talking to people. Are we up for that?
At least I have about a year to figure it out.
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