Halloween Magic On Panola
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
Water Valley hosted yet another neighborhood Halloween trick-or-treat worthy of a nostalgic 1980s childhood movie. Our town does a few things really well – crawfish, having a half-mile track, publishing a hometown newspaper, the Christmas parade, loving watermelons – to name only a few. The annual Halloween festivities that happen on the west side of town definitely make that list.
Every Halloween I help my friend Megan Patton give out candy from her Panola Street porch. She lives in the historic Creekmore House, which has an old iron gate straight out of a Tim Burton movie. Her house appears absolutely lovely on any day of the year. But, somehow, on Halloween the home manages to tip over an aesthetic fine line and look haunted – an observation made to Megan by several children and one adult trick-or-treater.
After I help Megan give out candy at her house each year, I walk down to Kathryn York’s house for her annual Halloween blow-out. I have never felt so old in my life as when the Yorks’ party had been going on for what I assumed was hours and I told Kathryn that I should probably get home as it was so late. Kathryn and I noted the kitchen wall clock had struck 10 p.m. Suddenly, Kathryn remembered that the wall clock had a dead battery and she pointed to the stove clock instead. The stove clock said 7:22 p.m. We both had a hearty laugh at our own expense until we realized, a few beats later, that the time change was occurring in mere hours, and it was, for all intents and purposes, 6:22 p.m.
This was the moment I officially became old. Suddenly, the mistaken time didn’t seem that funny anymore. We were both borderline concerned with ourselves and might have shared a mini-midlife crisis right there at her kitchen island with a party raging around us.
This year the Panola, Leland and Dupuy streets folks got together and asked the city to block their streets to cars during trick-or-treating hours. They asked that the entire neighborhood be safely devoted to the town’s kids and their families for an evening. This is something that many in the neighborhood have been discussing for years. Every year we watched the trick-or-treat traffic chaos from the porches and noted that if something weren’t done, the day would come when a child got hurt.
Finally, this year the kids were able to safely run across the street from house to house without fear of getting hit by cars. I know this street closure had to be a big relief to all the kids’ parents, as well. I’ll be interested to see how this neighborhood event could grow now that traffic safety has been checked off the list.
Biggest kudos to all the parents who took their kids out in the pouring rain to trick-or-treat. Y’all were the real troopers and it’s heartening to watch a town full of loving parents be good at what they do. Enjoy it, because one day your kids will be grown and it will be 6:22 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll wonder where the time has gone!
