Back again, Halloween has inspired me.  Last night I shared a beer with Maria, Margaret and Patty, all of us used to go into Tivoli, Baileys on the porch one year, and the Black Swan a couple of times. It just isn't the same without them.

I didn't even go up into town this year, but Sabra took Henry and said there was a man dressed like toast, that was standing in the middle of the road.  That gave me a memory of many years ago, when Tivoli became famous on Halloween, but not for any good reason.

Tivoli used to have a clean up day - it was great - you could put out anything, appliances, old furniture, etc, and they took it all to the dump.  But the year I am remembering, it wasn't carefully thought out.  Clean Up day came a few days before Halloween, and the local kids took advantage of it.  On Halloween night, it was a Saturday that year, the kids turned the center of Tivoli into a house.  There was a kitchen with a refrigerator, table, a living room with couches and chairs, and everything else that had picked up before the Village.  There was a picture in the newspaper of the mess, and as I remember, Laura and others were sitting on the couch, big smiles on their faces. 

Monsignor Kane was vivid the next day at Mass.  Driving to church, the town was in disrepair, an outhouse remained at the four corners, and toilet paper was hanging from every telephone line.  There was no sermon that morning, just how terrible our kids were, why weren't they supervised, how could a firetruck or ambulance get through that mess, on and on.  But actually, I was thinking about Halloween in Beacon when I was a kid.  We threw eggs, soaped windows, and tied threads across the road, tree to tree.  A car going through the threads made a terrible noise, and the drivers would stop and get out and look at their tires, while we hid behind the bushes.  Phone pranks were another thing we did:  "Is your street light on?" and after they came back to the phone and said "yes" , we would say, "Then blow it out."  That's when trick or treat really meant something.