Blood Flows in Town that Frowns on Bloody Halloweens

   I met the mayor of that town the same year they revamped their Halloween celebration. See, the people of Bottlesville were all up late one night, thinking about the approaching Halloween, talking about it, and they got tending to the mind that it really wasn't such a good idea.
   Halloween, I mean.
   "You know, all the girls use it as an excuse to dress trampy," said old Bob Saunders.
   "Yeh, and everybody dresses up like something evil," Buddy Thompson added.
   "The thing I don't like, is we take kids  -- impressionable young kids -- and glamorize the dark side of life before them," said Dutch Matthews.
   "Oh, and look how we feed them," Bernie Myers shot in. "We give them all kinds of candy, and its not just that we feed them candy, we glamorize it. That's what the night is all about, trick 'er treating. No wonder this nation is so fat and obese, we glamorize sugar with a holiday devoted to it."
   Well, I guess it wasn't the first time folks in this wonderful nation of ours have questioned the propriety of Fright Night. Most folks just roll with it, though, not wanting to dash a good time, and not seeing much of a harm, anyway.
   Not the people of Bottlesville, though. As I was saying, they were all sitting around talking, and they came up with this idea of revamping their Halloween. And, I don't mean revamping as in revampiring it, for they were dead-set on taking them vampires out.
   Now, I'm not here to tell you Halloween is such a horrible thing. It does seem to make for a lot of fun. Still, I like what these folks in Bottlesville pulled off. They pulled off one of the neatest little Halloween celebrations you're ever going to get your fangs on.
   I met their mayor that year, and he told me about it. Seems they decided they'd bring a circus to town that day, 'cept they respun the circus, even as they were respinning Halloween. Oh, there were the trick ponies, and the aerial artists, and all. But, they made sure their wasn't anything macabre, and they made sure all the participants were clothed a bit better than most circuses have 'em dressed. Didn't allow any soothsayers. Clowns? Yeh, they had clowns, and they brought in that guy that is dropped out of a plane while all handcuffed and in a casket and he makes his escape while freefalling in the sky.
   Oh, and Bottlesville renamed the whole day. Since they held their little party down in a hollow, they  decided they'd call it, Holloween, instead of Halloween. They only came out of the hollow when they were watching the Blue Angels and that guy freefalling in a casket.
   Now, I'd be amiss if I told you it was all about a circus that Halloween. That was a big part of it, but not the biggest part. See Bottlesville folks are giving folks, real good folks, always aiming to do something nice and sweet. So, they really felt like they needed to make it a day they did some giving.
   So, they hosted a blood drive. Yep, that's what they did, what with blood being a staple of a good halloween, they decided to go that direction. Why, they had such a blood drive as you've never seen. They didn't have enough blood bank workers in the whole of the town, so they had to bring them in from all the neighboring towns. I suppose every single one of the good folks in Bottlesville gave blood that day.
   You probably read about that, though, what with it setting some kind of world record for the most blood donated in a single blood drive. "Blood Flows in Town that Frowns on Bloody Halloweens," read one headline.
   Bottles of it.