The night the 'burbs come to town

Tonight's the night.  Hallowe'en! 

As I mentioned in my first post, we live in a walkable neighborhood in a relatively quiet, residential part of Washington.  There are quite a few things that make it accessible to walkers.  For example, although the houses are not particularly small, they are on modestly sized lots, convenient to each other.  The front doors are relatively close to the sidewalks.  And, yes, by the way, we have sidewalks, far from a given in the world of today's newer neighborhoods.  Here's a larger-scale version of the photo I put in that first post.

These things make it perfect for trick-or-treating. 

(As an aside, it violates every fiber of my being to use "trick or treat" as a verb.  But do read on.)

In Washington, it is easy to tell the city cars from the suburban cars, because they have different license plates.  City dwellers have DC tags, suburbanites have tags from Virginia or Maryland.  I expect to see a lot of the latter in the neighborhood tonight.

That's because, in many cases, their neighborhoods are not walkable.  Now, it's not the residents' fault - people choose to live in suburbs for all sorts of understandable reasons.  But so many have been built without much attention to walking.  Driveways are longer - in some cases much longer - and may require traversing dark areas.  There may be no sidewalks at all.  Or, in what I think is really schizo, they may have a sidewalk, but only on one side of the street.  Go figure.  I mean, how do the developers know which side of the street the walkers are going to live on?  Anyway, some of these developments are not the best places for your kids to go trick-or-treating, if you consider walking door-to-door to be part of the experience.

So tonight they will drive their kids to neighborhoods like ours and send them around to knock on our doors.  I'm tempted to give the interlopers lumps of coal, but there's no way we're going to take it out on the kids.  Maybe some of them will even like the differences, and tell their parents.

And, besides, I have a better idea.  How about, one day next spring, we round up all the kids in our neighborhood, pick an appropriate suburban subdivision, and go play ball on the suburbanites' front yards?  Now that might be fun.