Friday, October 30, 2015

The Purge

Growing up in Detroit, October 30th was the date for Devil's Night.  I later found out other places didn't have it, though many had something called Mischief Night, which is pretty similar.

In Detroit, It was generally a night for mostly harmless (to us) fun--egging windows, teepeeing yards.  It eventually got out of hand, though, and featured arson, grand theft auto, that sort of stuff.  Thus the city came up with Angel's Night, where a bunch of volunteers spend the night watching out for major crimes.

Here's the part I never got.  Why is it the night before Halloween?  When you go out on Halloween, you say "trick of treat." Devil's night should be where you mete out the tricks for those with insufficient treats.  Sounds simple enough to me.

Maybe kids are too fat and happy the day after the holiday to cause too much trouble.  On the other hand, I think a sugar rush is the perfect time to go out and have some fun.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Denver Guy said...

Maybe the trick is everyone thinks it will be 10/31?

We had mischief night in New York. I only went out once - cracked an egg on my school. I'd feel guilty except my school deserved it.

8:50 AM, October 30, 2015  
Blogger New England Guy said...

We had Devil's Night in suburban Pittsburgh in the mid 70s. (Our teachers claimed only our town had it, not the neighboring towns, because, you know, we were really really bad kids who would never amount to nuthin). The extent of it was soaping windows, throwing pebbles and crabapples on metal porch roofs and stringing rubber bands across the street (the teenage dude whose aerial broke on that was totally pissed though) and the next day hearing about how awful this generation was, how civilization was in decline while hooligans and vandals ran free. I of course never did any of those things directly but got blamed a couple times nonetheless (had to pony up a couple bucks for that aerial). Used to tell my folks that I had to stay out that night to "protect" our house. Ah yes those were the days.

9:33 AM, October 30, 2015  
Blogger ColumbusGuy said...

I bet your folks totally fell for that one.

3:13 PM, October 30, 2015  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You fucks should try living here for a week it's devil's night when it's not October

11:05 PM, October 30, 2016  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, a comment a year later. And a comment on that comment almost a year later.

9:59 PM, October 13, 2017  

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