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FREDERICKTOWN — There’s a man located on McClelland Road in Fredericktown with an amazing personal definition of community and quite the festive spirit.
That man is Jim Everett, and on Oct. 18 he did something that may appear small on the outside, but based on 50 ear-to-ear smiles meant the world to the kids in his community.
For 10 years, Everett has been driving his tractor around his rural neighborhood pulling wagons full of trick-or-treaters perched atop hay bales and making stops for kids to collect candy.
When he was younger, Everett sat on that same wagon riding the route he drives today.
“My grandpa did this for us just as a neighborhood trick-or-treat for some of the kids that I grew up with around here,” Everett said.
“That’s actually the wagon that he had, the one we just backed up into the barn.”
A heartland Halloween
While Everett said he and his wife could have taken their three kids into town to trick-or-treat all these years, the hayride just meant more to him.
“It’s more for my kids and the kids around here to get to do what I got to do,” Everett said.
“Nobody was doing it at the time, so I was like, ‘Well, I might as well start it myself.'”
When the hayride started, Everett was only pulling one wagon.
Now, as more kids have come out year after year, he’s hitched up three.
“Been pretty successful ever since we started. Started out with one wagon, then two and now for the last three or four years we’ve had three wagons full of 20, 30, 40 kids,” Everett said.
The folks who come to the event typically get wind of it via a Facebook post Everett’s wife puts out or good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth.
“It’s a spread-out neighborhood, sure, but we’re all connected by this one road,” Everett said.
Come rain or shine, Everett said he has never canceled a hayride and runs the event on the third weekend in October to avoid harsh weather.
“We tried to do it closer to Halloween but we’ve had a few years where it’s been snowing or raining, so we’ve just backed it up a couple weekends,” Everett said.
To the kids, it’s all the same.
“There’s one kid here, he’s never done this before and I know he was pretty excited about it,” Everett said.
Seeking more community involvement
Along the 17-stop route, it’s hard to miss the “James Everett for Wayne Township Trustee” signs out front of several homes.
Everett said that’s just another piece of his grandpa’s mantle he hopes to take up this November.
“My grandpa was always a township trustee and my Uncle Jim, he’s been a trustee for 30-some years, and I found out this year he was going to step down,” Everett said.
“So I was like, ‘I might as well throw my name in the hat and keep kind of family tradition going.'”
Safe to say that tradition means a lot to Everett, his family and definitely the sweet tooths of the trick-or-treaters bumping along on Everett’s wagons.
(Below is a gallery from Everett’s hayride on Oct. 18. Credit: Jack Slemenda)
