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Since I became a grownup, and especially since I now have my very own little trick-or-treater, I have noticed people tend to gather into two camps around the Halloween season. One camp is full of folks who long for the trick-or-treating Halloweens of yesteryear, in which kids in costume went door to door requesting sweets. The other camp seems to see more self-contained Halloween activities like truck-or-treat's and haunted hayrides as the way of the future for Halloween. I generally tend to fall into the latter camp, but perhaps not for the reason you're thinking … The thing is, well, I am a huge scaredy-cat when it comes to Halloween monsters. And, when I take my kid to a very self-contained Halloween event, like a trunk-or-treat held in a parking lot, there is less chance for me to run into them. Now, every October, it seems there is some slick scamp dressed up in a Dracula mask or in a costume of Frankenstein's monster waiting to ambush me at every single Fall Festival, trunk-or-treat or haunted hayride. However, unlike taking my kid door-to-door to ask for candy, there are less places for them to hide to jump out and terrify me.

75 YEARS AGO OCTOBER 13, 1950

75 YEARS AGO OCTOBER 8, 1950

This year, 2025, marks the 85th celebration of National Newspaper Week. Since 1940, Newspaper Association Managers has sponsored and supported National Newspaper Week, a week-long promotion of the newspaper industry in the United States and Canada.

The month of October, I believe, is truly the loveliest time in Alabama. Somebody said once to me that October is 'the gift and the reward we earn by surviving the brutal summer in the South.' Everything seems to wake up from a hazy kind of slumber that the summer heat casts over the land; it is like the spell on the kingdom in Sleeping Beauty is suddenly broken with that first, fresh, crisp autumn breeze. It is like all the people, all the animals, all the birds, all of the very environment around you breathes a sigh of relief that seems to whisper: 'Yes, we can go on …' It is also the time when the hawks return to the woods around my home. The red-tailed hawk is my very favorite bird of prey. And is it any surprise? They are quite a common and beautiful sight here in the South. If you spend any time driving around the country roads in Alabama, you'll most likely see one perched high up on a dead tree or a telephone wire, watching the meadows below for the slightest sign of a mouse or a rabbit. However, with their fierce yellow eyes, round-tipped wings and, of course, the rust-colored tail that earns the raptor its name, it isn't unusual to also see these birds standing sentinel on a building's ledge in Birmingham or Huntsville, hunting more urban prey like pigeons and rats.

75 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 30, 1950

As of this writing, municipal elections are taking place. In Barbour County, mayoral elections are on the ballot in Clayton and Eufaula and a council election will be determined after polls close tonight in Clayton.

75 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 22, 1950

When my daughter was very little, she would get cross at the Confederate roses blooming in my Mama's backyard. No matter how we tried, we couldn't make our indignant toddler understand that the beautiful, unusual flowers were indeed the same plant no matter if their blooms turned from white to pink and then to blood-red in the course of twenty-four hours. No. Rebekah's two-year-old mind was simply convinced that somebody was switching out the flowers during the span of a day just to trick her!