Happy Halloween!
For those of you on the west coast: Make your own.
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brian stouder • del • caliban • Jeff (the mild-mannered one) • Dexter • Dexter • alex • John c • basset • Jeff Borden • Dexter • nancy • MichaelG • Ricardo • nancy • Suzi • Ricardo • and YOU.
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December 21
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brian stouder said on October 31, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Very cool!
(Jack the Pumpkin!)
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del said on October 31, 2008 at 4:47 pm
You’re good. I have 432, wait, 431 pieces of candy to give out tonight. Every year we get over 400 trick or treaters . . . does anyone out in Nancy Nall land get more?
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caliban said on October 31, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Don‘t know exactly what to make of this, but I imagine Rob Reiner’s mom up in heaven was saying “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Feel free to move about the Oval Office. (This is interactive.)
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 31, 2008 at 10:36 pm
A friend of mine, blogging from John McCain’s bus in eastern Ohio:
On board The Straight Talk Express
Posted 10/31/2008 9:43 PM EDT on newarkadvocate.com
The John McCain campaign rally in New Philadelphia and 25-minute interview aboard the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign bus made for quite a memorable experience Friday. . . I came away with a few impressions, some which reinforced previous views and others that contradicted them.
[snip]
A couple of confrontations called for Secret Service attention and made me think about the need for all these men and women in dark sunglasses and earphones.
I am old enough to remember the late 1960s, when fear gripped the country after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. And threats have been made recently against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
A McCain supporter wearing a shirt with some kind of racist language on it was escorted out of the rally and an Obama supporter with an Obama sign drew attention but was allowed to stay.
I was praying my story remained coverage of a man running for president and not something much different and much worse. Thankfully, things remained calm and I didn’t notice any other major problems.
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Dexter said on October 31, 2008 at 11:40 pm
When I was a teenager I had a Honda 50, a small motorcycle.
I had heard Vandolah Road was haunted. This is north of Fort Wayne a bit…late on Halloween night I decided to ride the little motorbike on Vandolah Road, an insane idea because the bike only went 32 mph and I had to ride down Route 427 for twenty miles to get there…but I did it. I had to see if the story was true. I didn’t even know the true story, but I do now, 43 years after that ride, I found it on …the internet.
“FORT WAYNE -HAUNTED NATURE PRESERVE
If you go north on Auburn rd. it will turn into Vandolah. Turn right on a dirt road after the overpass and you will see a nature preserve. This is where a series of bodies were found many years ago. The bodies were so bady decomposed that no one was able to tell if they were dumped there or if the legend of the Indian burial ground is true. The legend says that if you stand in the middle of the woods and stay quiet too long you could drop dead. So if you come to this preserve just run and never look back.”
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Dexter said on October 31, 2008 at 11:47 pm
more haunted spots around FWA
http://fortwaynehomepage.net/content/halloweenfulltext08/?cid=424
I moved to this town in 1977. I heard rumors that my house was haunted. I most assuredly do not believe in ghosts. Others in the house occasionally reported seeing them; I laughed it off.
In the basement someone had tied a noose from a beam.
I assumed some bored kid had done it. I began hearing stories of how a woman had hanged herself in that basement, and again I paid no attention to it.
One day I was having a beer in a local tavern, and a couple geezers were talking…they didn’t know me, but they were talking about my house, and how the woman had indeed hanged herself in what was then my basement.
I then believed the entire story. One day I cut down the novelty noose. Or WAS it a novelty at all…was it real…the actual noose she used? The ghosts began causing problems, as people in the house started seeing them more and more…it was the ghosts that ran us out of that home…and I never saw any of them.
My wife has not been down that street for nearly thirty years now, although the house is less than a mile from our current home. And…I drove past it today …For Sale…once again.
I have lost count on the realtors who have handled that house…it’s always a different one.
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alex said on November 1, 2008 at 9:00 am
I’m a Vandolah descendant, Dex. The reason that area remains largely a virgin forest is that my ancestors bought it for milling. A local history book mentions that when James Vandolah requested that particular parcel at the Land Office in 1832, they told him he was crazy to want it because the land wasn’t any good for farming. He told them he didn’t plan on farming it. He wanted the water rights to Cedar Creek.
The township and county boundaries hadn’t even been set up at that point and his parcel stretched all the way up into modern-day DeKalb County.
A lot of people assume that nearby Dutch Ridge was so named because of the Vandolahs, but they were actually Presbyterians who had converted from Quakerism and Dutch Ridge was actually named for the Deutsch Reformed church there. I’ve long had my suspicions that the Cedar Creek valley could have been used for Underground Railroad purposes but still have no concrete evidence.
I live in the vicinity today and it’s beautiful. In fact, much of James Vandolah’s original holdings are now nature preserves held by the ACRES land trust and the Izaak Walton League. There’s another preserve nearby that’s also owned by the ACRES land trust, Bicentennial Woods, and this belonged to another one of my ancestors, Nathaniel Fitch, who was also an enterprising miller and one of the first settlers in the area.
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John c said on November 1, 2008 at 9:46 am
“Every year we get over 400 trick or treaters . . . does anyone out in Nancy Nall land get more?”
I’ve always been curious how many trick or treaters we get, as we, like Nancy, are in High Trick or Treat Toursim country. This year I got a brainstorm. And just before the first ring of the doorbell I rifled through my Little League coaching bag and pulled out the trusty pitch-counter.
The verdict: 476!
And the person doing the clicking (I was out with the kids) said: “If anything, that’s a little low.”
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basset said on November 1, 2008 at 12:24 pm
476… was that in Fort Wayne?
here in suburban Nashville we got one… before we set a bowl of candy on the porch and left about quarter to seven.
friend who lives in the yuppie, renovated-old-house part of town says churches from poor neighborhoods run buses full of costumed kids to her street…
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Jeff Borden said on November 1, 2008 at 12:28 pm
We drew 165 trick-or-treaters last night in our North Side of Chicago neighborhood. This was an all-time record, but in fairness, it was one of the loveliest Halloween’s ever for weather. My wife and I sat on the front steps –drinking, of course– for most of the night as the temperatures were in the mid-60s. Various and sundry neighbors stopped by before or after making the rounds with their munchkins, so the result was:
* all candy gone
* nine of 12 beers (12 oz. variety)
* both bottles of Coney Island Freaktoberest ale (24 oz.)
* significant but unrecordable quantity of frozen vodka
We noticed a deep drop in oversized, overaged kids, too. Maybe a dozen total who were way too big to be out copping candy but all the kids were polite. My favorite costume twosome: a young couple had their black lab dressed as Superman and their little girl as Supergirl. Cute beyond words.
Remember to “fall back” from daylight savings time tonight.
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Dexter said on November 1, 2008 at 2:08 pm
alex…it appears you have proper lineage credentials to be a future ghost. Thanks for the information…I had not heard of James Vandolah.
Now I am off to the car wash to scrub the blood off my car door, then I have to do something about the scratches that damn one-armed man made in the cemetery last night when he hooked his hand into my door frame and I drove off with it. Anybody need a hook-hand…free to a needy recipient?
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nancy said on November 1, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I ran out of candy at 7:20 p.m. Like Jeff, I sat outside in a lawn chair with a glass of wine and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins on the iPod speakers. I noticed fewer overgrown teenagers glomming candy. Lots of tourists, but every one was in a costume and all were polite. One story: At one point I went in to restock. A kid was approaching with his mother, and I called out, “Take your pick, one to a customer. I’m going in to get some more.” I was inside for a minute or two, and when I came out the kid was still standing there; his mother wouldn’t let him go to the next house until he had told me thank-you.
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MichaelG said on November 1, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Here in the Sacramento ‘hood it has been cool (mid 60’s) and rainy for the last two days. It did stop last evening for a dry T or T time. I had exactly one child stop here. He was a little black kid about 6 or so sans costume. Pop was out on the sidewalk. He politely thanked me for the candy and then told me that I had a nice house. My guess is that all the local kids went to up scale neighborhoods. You know, like all the kids who migrated to Nancy’s place? The area they vacated? That’s where I live. I’ll just bring all the left over candy to work.
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Ricardo said on November 1, 2008 at 4:42 pm
We live at the last street in the neighborhood on a cul-de-sac with houses only on one side of the street in Orange, CA. Every year, my wife buys lots of candy and every year no one shows up. I wouldn’t come here if I were trick/treating.
Last night, I waited for a while and finally one small girl showed up. About a half-hour later a group of about 7 kids came by and that was it. I turned off the light and two more older girls came to the house. Today, I found one piece of candy on the lawn.
How about that woman in GP Farms that refused candy to kids whose parents are voting for Obama? She could end up with more left over candy than we did. Next year, I’m giving out healthy things like those individually wrapped prunes. Sorry, DRIED PLUMS.
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nancy said on November 1, 2008 at 4:50 pm
How about that woman in GP Farms that refused candy to kids whose parents are voting for Obama?
Did I miss a news bulletin?
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Suzi said on November 1, 2008 at 10:14 pm
when I was growing up in FW, Devil’s Hollow was the scary road where the claw-hand guy was supposed to getcha. Seems like a good time for some old-fashioned Hoosier poetry –
The Little Orphan Annie by James Whitcomb Riley
Little Orphan Annie’s come to my house to stay.
To wash the cups and saucers up and brush the crumbs away.
To shoo the chickens from the porch and dust the hearth and sweep,
and make the fire and bake the bread to earn her board and keep.
While all us other children, when the supper things is done,
we sit around the kitchen fire and has the mostest fun,
a listening to the witch tales that Annie tells about
and the goblins will get ya if ya don’t watch out!
Once there was a little boy who wouldn’t say his prayers,
and when he went to bed at night away up stairs,
his mammy heard him holler and his daddy heard him bawl,
and when they turned the covers down,
he wasn’t there at all!
They searched him in the attic room
and cubby hole and press
and even up the chimney flu and every wheres, I guess,
but all they ever found of him was just his pants and round-abouts
and the goblins will get ya if ya don’t watch out!!
Once there was a little girl who always laughed and grinned
and made fun of everyone, of all her blood and kin,
and once when there was company and old folks was there,
she mocked them and she shocked them and said, she didn’t care.
And just as she turned on her heels and to go and run and hide,
there was two great big black things a standing by her side.
They snatched her through the ceiling fore she knew what shes about,
and the goblins will get ya if ya don’t watch out!!
When the night is dark and scary,
and the moon is full and creatures are a flying and the wind goes Whoooooooooo,
you better mind your parents and your teachers fond and dear,
and cherish them that loves ya, and dry the orphans tears
and help the poor and needy ones that cluster all about,
or the goblins will get ya if ya don’t watch out!!!
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Ricardo said on November 2, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I found this:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081101/POLITICS01/811010422/&imw=Y
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