Thoughts from Crow Cottage (My Main Blog.)
crowbelle's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boo! BOO! Did I scare you? We are the anti-Halloween here in Salem, The Witch City. Not ALL of us who live here are anti-Halloween, but we are. Our house. No kids welcome here begging for sugar-highs. No goblins or ghosts wanted and no teenagers in gangs looking for free food. Stay out. And if you manage to get into the front yard, don't hurt yourself tripping over the little fence out front... it was put there to keep the dogs in, but also to keep you out! I'm taking all the money I normally would have blown on bags of candy bars, that oh-so-healthy snack that all kids seem to be craving this time of year, and donate it to my credit card company in hopes of paying down my balance by the tiniest bit. We here in Salem have been long-suffering - for the whole long 31 days of October - thanks to Haunted Happenings. This is a scheme dreamed up by the businesses of Salem who don't seem to rake in enough money during the rest of the year, and they need this month of constant lines of tourists to make their money for the year. If it weren't for Haunted Happenings each October, they'd probably relocate to a mall somewhere, and all the "charm" of downtown Salem would go back to its ghost-town look of a decade or more ago, before Haunted Happenings happened. But for us - the poor slobs who have to schlep thru our fair city each and every day, going to and from work, and not really concerned with the little novelty shops and museums along the way, it's just one giant headache from one end of the city to the other. Wall to wall cars, SUVs, trucks, motorcycles, and tourists. Oh, the motorcycles! I didn't see them myself, in person, but I heard them. Oh yeah..... there were supposed to be 10,000 motorcycles hit Salem this past Sunday... from all over the country... mainly for the purpose of raising money for some charity (? muscular dystrophy or something like that). That's fine. But it's like the Hell's Angels had invaded the town. We live way at the southern end of the city, on the line with Swampscott, so we didn't get most of the tourist traffic down this way, but on Sunday afternoon, sitting here in the house, all I heard, all afternoon long, was the long drawn-out revving of motorcycle engines as they traveled down L. Avenue, the main thoroughfare going out of the city, past our neighborhood. It was a steady stream of them, and it went on for at least 3 hours! I can't imagine what it must have been like downtown with all of them there for the day! We are a city of maybe 35,000 souls, but during Halloween we swell to about 60,000 + souls, and goblins, and witches, and warlocks, and gangs, and cops, and EMTs, and all that jazz. Tomorrow is November. I've been waiting for that day for 31 days now, and I can hardly wait! Cheers, Bex 3:16 pm - 31 October 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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