As a kid I always hoped for reasonably warm, dry weather for "Fright Night."  Unfortunately, living in Chicago, the chance of that in late October was slim.  More often than not, our Halloween fun would be dampened by cold and/or rain and our costumes would be hidden under layers of coats/raincoats, but we still found ways to have fun.  

     Since I've grown up, had kids and now grandkids, but I still have the same hope of mild weather.  It's always more fun for the kids when they can enjoy the evening and show off their costumes without freezing to death or being all bundled up in coats.  Luckily, here in Virginia, the odds are much better and we've had several beautiful Halloween days/evenings in a row and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for 2009! 

     Our first Halloween away from Chicago was 1979 in Denver Colorado where I was stationed for a school after being commissioned.  We were living in a very nice apartment complex in Aurora just outside Denver with a lot of younger couples and kids.  Carrie was still a baby then but Brandy and Denise were both old enough to enjoy Trick-or-Treating around the complex.  Late October weather in Denver was pleasant and I remember it as rather warm during the day and cool but still comfortable in the early evening when the kids Trick-or-Treated.  It did get rather chilly later at night but by then the kids were done with the evening's festivities.  We had a lot of ghost and goblin visitors that evening and I was kept busy answering the door while Hil took the kids out to get their share of the candy.

     When we lived in Biloxi, about the only thing that would spoil Halloween was a downpour or a hurricane and late October evenings in Southern Mississippi were normally still shirt-sleeve weather.  If anything, it was sometimes a bit on the warm side for some of the costumes. 

     While we were there we threw a couple Halloween costume parties at our house.  They were always popular with the flyers at the 7^th ACCS where I was assigned and with the nurses at Gulf Coast Community Hospital where Hil worked.  One year, one of my squadron-mates came as the Cookie Monster.  His costume totally encased him in long, thick synthetic blue fur and a huge Cookie Monster headpiece.  By the end of the evening he was drenched with sweat and was about dying in that thing but he was a good sport and kept it on all evening. 

     Hawaii was pretty much always beautiful weather for Halloween (and most any other time as well).  Halloween wasn't quite as big a thing with the locals but there were a lot of military families living in Mililani where we owned a house and we always had a pretty good turn-out for Trick-or-Treat.  We had a couple Halloween parties at our house there as well, continuing the tradition of inviting the people who worked with me at Pacific Command and the nurses that worked with Hil at Queen Emma Hospital in Honolulu.  We had a 16x35' in-ground pool in the back yard with a diving board (it took up almost half of our Hawaii-sized back yard).  Everyone brought bathing suits and when the costumes just got too unbearably warm, a quick dip in the pool was just the ticket to cool off. 

     Our first Halloween there (1984) was also our first Halloween party there; the first of many parties we would throw in that house over the years.  On Halloween afternoon, as Hil was making veggies and other "finger food" for the party, one of our daughters yelled that green water was coming up into their bathtub.  It seems the peels Hil was putting into the disposal had clogged the pipes.  I had to find the outside drain plug (not that easy since we'd only been in the house a short while and I had to hunt all over to find it) and feed the garden hose into it to blast the clog out. 

     If that weren't enough, about half an hour after the party started, the entire neighborhood lost power.  It was off for almost three hours and we had to resort to several large candles for inside lighting.  We found out later that, rather than the work of some magical power-robbing orb or the power company playing a Halloween trick, it was just a Gecko that had gotten into the circuits at the main power sub-station, shorting it out.  It did make for an interesting Halloween.

     When we moved to South Carolina, we found the weather there not much different than that in Mississippi, though a little less humid.  Our kids were old enough by then that they didn't Trick-or-Treat any more but there were still a lot of smaller kids in the neighborhood so we always had lots of little ghost and goblin visitors to pass treats out to.