Essays from West of 98: Candy and Community
Last night was Halloween night. Lauren took the girls on a trick-or-treating adventure and I stayed home to pass out candy. Rather than sit inside and wait for the doorbell to ring, I dragged a camp chair out to the front porch. I figured a person sitting on the porch is more inviting to would-be trick-or-treaters. Plus, it was a beautiful night and I got to read a book in between the porch visitors (re-reading “Goodbye to a River,” for those wondering my book of choice).
There’s a great website called RevitalizeorDie.Com. It is devoted to improving local communities and there’s a great line on the website: “hope is not a strategy for improving your community. If you want to realize change, you are going to have to take action.”
Obviously, that is a mindset to which I subscribe. Yesterday morning, I read a great article on the website called “Candyland.” I’ll link it on my website, but the quick summary is that strong trick-or-treating in town is a positive sign for your community. Kids can successfully walk to enough places to succeed in their candy acquisition mission. Families feel comfortable taking their kids out and about to a variety of houses where they may or may not know the residents. Adults want to participate in the festivities and engage with the local children by passing out candy.
Not long after I read that article, someone else in Stamford shared it on Facebook (funny enough, those folks stopped by my porch last night, shout out to Chelsea and Spencer Sharp and kiddos). I thought about that article as I watched the trick-or-treaters last night and later on as my wife told me about the places they visited. Our street is the farm-to-market road that is the primary thoroughfare to areas east of Stamford, so it can be busy. And yet, there were more kids going door to door than I could count, usually with parents trailing behind in vehicles. Some families traveled by golf cart. I passed out treats to toddlers and children who needed parental assistance to talk. I passed out treats to enthusiastic teenagers. One elementary school age girl told me with excitement, “I heard that a mayor lived here!” Our neighbors sat on their porch and passed out candy while spinning classic rock tunes that had a Halloween flair.
Wendell Berry has written that the decline in community can be directly tied to all the things that distract us from congregating together. People (me included) spend too much time carried away to other places by the automobile, television, and phone/computer screens and too little time sitting on porches talking with one another. When you spend more time in other places (even just mentally), you focus too little on the places and people right in front of you. Those people and places are impacted accordingly. It frays the ties that bind one another. A community is only a community if the people interact. Otherwise, it is merely a collection of people living separately in proximity to one another.
A healthy trick-or-treating culture alone is not sufficient to sustain a community, but it does not hurt. It is a sign of many positive things in a community that can grow and build elsewhere in the year. For starters, I thought to myself that I should spend more time sitting on our front porch in the evenings. Our back porch has a lovely view, but our front porch connects us to the community in an entirely different manner. My wife said she heard a podcast about people who put a picnic table in their yard as an informal neighborhood gathering space and the outcomes were remarkable.
It would not hurt us all to spend more time gathering together and less time being carried away. Our places and the people in them will be stronger for it. Last night was a good reminder for me and a healthy place to start.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.