Halloween Week: Devil's Night in Bloomfield Hills

Raking at night.

I've never raked at night before. For years the idea seemed as ridiculous as reading at night: you can't see what you're doing. But this night, the night before Halloween, I had to rake. Had to make the place look nice for trick-or-treaters. There is appropriate spookiness -- novelty tombstones, plastic glow-in-the-dark skeletons, ghost colorforms to adhere to the window. Then there's the unraked lawn, dirty stoop, and Miller Lite empties sort of lawn. Who's inside: recently divorced dad? latchkey kids whose parents have left for a month? the sort of person who makes Saturday Night audience of the Fox network wonder why they don't put a shirt on before being arrested, or at least for pity's sake don't sign the form and get their face blurred?

My lawn is not that sort of lawn anymore, thanks to raking at night. It's more of a legal blindness: I can still see the leaves against the grass, but not the damage the rake might do, not the acorn caps and helicoptered seedpods I might miss, not the dead spot which makes raking or cutting or anything short of sod look good. At the end my lawn, in the dim moonlight, looked as good as the ones done by a service twice a week. Cue that Bette Midler song about from a distance, since there's no suitable song about the wonders of glaucoma.

Devil's Night in Bloomfield Hills taking place on October 30, appropriate for posting today. I didn't try to work in any supernatural horror of violence. It's sad more than frightening. --Jeff