Local families prepare for Halloween

By Laurie Gordon
Halloween is just around the corner, and some people get really into celebrating the holiday. Area schools hold parades, dances and activity nights, and costumes of all sorts abound. For families like the Rowes, who live in Fredon, decorating is huge.
Phil, Marisa, and especially their daughter, Winter, thrive on decorations and costumes.
“My favorite thing about Halloween is that it’s all about having fun,” said Marisa Rowe. “You get to dress up and be who you want to be without being judged. There are no gifts or pressure. It’s an even playing field and you can just enjoy the holiday.”
For Winter, it’s all about the family time.
“My favorite part of decorating is the planning and the time I get to spend with Mommy and Daddy,” she said.
The Rowe’s house is filled, inside and out, with Halloween decorations.
The only decoration that might have to take a break when no one else is home is their Menacing Molly doll.
“That thing is just plain spooky,” Marisa Rowe said, “Especially when I’m the only one at the house.”
As for costumes, the Rowes love to make their own and this year made Winter both a Starbuck’s frappuccino costume and a cotton candy costume, which she’ll wear to various Halloween events.
Of pumpkins and a love storySara Bartlett and Michael Young, of Stillwater, have been carving pumpkins since their kids were little. But they weren’t together until several years ago. Bartlett and Young have known each other since they were 13.
“He actually asked me to marry him in eighth grade,” Bartlett said. “But I thought we were a little young.”
High school came and went and they each went off to college and married other people. They both had two kids before each got divorced.
A class reunion sparked a friendship again, and five years later that childhood proposal became reality and they were married.
They shared the love of carving pumpkins, and when they were married, it meant great things for their house (and neighborhood) every Halloween.
Young had started carving about 20 pumpkins with his kids and Bartlett had done four or five with hers. For Young, this love had grown and over the years, he carved more and more until it settled in at about 100.
In 2014, the year Bartlett and Young were married, they each had to take a whole week off of work to carve after having put the patterns on the week before.
And then there are the carving parties.
Bartlett said, “I said, ‘I love this Mike but let’s invite friends to help us next year.’”
Now, the carving party is always the weekend before Halloween and the week leading up to the party, Bartlett and Young put the patterns on. Families and friends join in and last year they were up to 150 pumpkins.
There is some attrition, though: deer love to eat pumpkins.
“I know that some people dunk the pumpkins in a bleach mixture to preserve them, but since we throw them out for the deer to eat we don’t,” Bartlett said. “The pumpkins live in our garage after they have been carved to help protect them from rot and creatures. The hardest is when Halloween is on a Saturday or Sunday — they have to hold up a whole week so we tend to let our friends only carve so many and we carve more during the week.”
As to the cost, fortunately Young has a friend who owns a big barn store who gives the couple a nice discount.
Bartlett and Young use Christmas lights to light the Jack-O-Lanterns and between that, the cost of the pumpkins and candy for the Trick-or-Treaters, the price tag comes to $500-$600 per year.
But, it’s a wonderful labor of love. “We just love to watch the faces of the kids and their parents as they look at all the pumpkins. We take the bench and put it in the front and just sit and watch and hand out candy,” Bartlett said. “We’ve started saying the kids have to tell us their favorite pumpkins so we can pick the top pumpkin of the year — last year the clown Pennywise from the movie ‘It’ won.”
There’s another reason Bartlett, who works as a director/producer/educator at The Newton Theatre, is so enthralled with making their house something spectacular each Halloween.
“Halloween is my birthday so everybody gets dressed up and celebrates with me,” she said.
The couple loves it when people first see their “Pumpkin House.”
Bartlett recalled, “One year I was out on the porch on Mischief Night and a bunch of teenagers were walking down the street doing a little mischief and when they got to our house they yelled, ‘We love your pumpkins and just so you know all the kids know your house is off limits for any mischief! See you tomorrow night.’”
The Pumpkin House of Edgewood Drive is a true Halloween community tradition.