Halloween Displays, Part II

Ain't no stoppin' us now! Cranberry County Magazine is driving through your town, photographing your yard... all in search of cool Halloween Displays! We don't ask, we take!

We posted Part One yesterday, and we'll be laying down the law all week, probably on the daily.

We questioned Facebook, and let the people dictate our travels. We covered a lot of ground, and here's some of what we found.

We caught this family in the act! Busted!

This family, in Plymouth, is unique in that we spoke to them before shooting. I generally avoid doing so. I'm a very large man, and I dress shabbily enough that generous people tell me that I look like a basketball coach... while others say that I look homeless. I'm not the guy you want to see walking into your yard, and I'd fully understand if someone shot me.

"That's the life, that I lead..."

Cranberry County Magazine will always be up in your spot. Jessica's very first article with me ended up with us being spoken to by a Detective, although that was pretty much 105% my fault. Hey, I thought Edaville Railroad was abandoned, like Rocky Point or Pripyat.... honest mistake, the detective understood fully.

I should never get out of the car, but sometimes I do.

No, we don't decorate our own yard. We have a pumpkin, and we may even carve it, but that's about it.

I have a pretty isolated house, not many people see it. No one in my neighborhood has had a trick-or-treater in the ten years I've lived here. I enjoy Halloween vicariously through creative people, just like you are doing right now.

I don't even take my own kid around the neighborhood, nor do any of the parents I see at the bus stop. I take my kid to a high-end neighborhood in Duxbury, where we aim for full-size candy bars. It works better than you'd think it would.

They may be on to me on Washington Street, however. We might have to try Shore Road in Chatham or Jerusalem Road in Cohasset this year.

Jessica, who is considerably smaller than I am, has already refused in advance and (forgive my Latin legalese) ad infinitum to wear a kid's costume and a mask to disguise her adult appearance and double our candy haul. I was kind of hoping for Sexy Nurse.

Also, if I am trick-or-treating with two kids, people will give me beer. Most suburban homeowners keep beer handy, and drop one on an adult herding around a sizable group of kids. A parent needs fortification on cold autumn nights.

Again, this strategy works better than you'd think it would.

Maybe things are different than when I was a kid. Maybe I got too big, and the decorations that scared me as a child now are like the 30" faux Stonehenge from Spinal Tap. Maybe I should blame shoddy Asian manufacturing.

It seemed like every house in Quincy in the 1970s was done up for Halloween. My 1980s hood in Duxbury was a bit less decorated, but that was also a highly isolated village that had maybe 20 people living in it after Labor Day.

It's the hyper-suburban forest/tree question... if you put a pumpkin or your steps and no one sees it, did you really decorate?

That's not a problem the people in the pictures you see today have, because Cranberry County Magazine cares enough to go out and document the fun.

Other things that I never encountered in the 1970s includes our aborted mission to the Pine Hills of Plymouth.

The Pine Hills looked tremendous on paper. Nice houses, rich people, and the sheer size of the place means that there must be a ton of kids. Of course it was going to be decorated.

We paused outside the entrance. We only had a little sunlight left to work with. The question that was stopping us... would a place like that have restrictions on decorations?

Time is money, daylight was wastin', and we didn't have any leads in that neighborhood. We headed inland, to the house with the spooky statues in the yard.

We weren't at Versailles, either.

Don't get me wrong, it was a sweet house, just maybe not statue-sweet. I'm pretty sure that this was Middleboro.

Middle Bro has some cool 1800s houses, and is spooky in her own right, but this yard was trippin' balls. I'd hate to go there at night, and would probably refuse to enter the yard unless they were handing out Kit-Kats or something yummy.

I'm lucky that I don't take LSD anymore, because this house would have broken me if I had been Walking With The King.

This is the most ostentatious flowerpot that I have ever seen. I think that may be Atlas.

The ladder implies that this house isn't finished yet, always a plus mark in the Hardcore category.

We sort of ran three trips so far. We did a Weymouth-Hingham-Norwell-Hanover run that started too late and was interrupted by a nice dinner at Wahlburgers.

The next day, we worked Plymouth, Kingston, Plympton and Halifax.

Yesterday, we finished Halifax after going through Rochester, Carver, Bridgewater and both parts of Whitman/Hanson.

Our two big remaining trips- and this is both weather and auto permitting- are Duxbury and Cape Cod. I may run a Bourne-Wareham trip today if I can sneak away from the Ol' Ball & Chain.

Stay Spooky!