In my town, the witching hour is six o'clock, and not just on the last day of October. Ease off the interstate around that time, and one best be prepared for the last mile of the day to drain the last ounce of patience as every last commuter seems to descend home in a swarm. Tonight, however, the streets in front of the strip malls and big boxes were so empty that I'll even call it eerie in honor of the day. As I wound past the series of subdivisions between my house and the main road, I searched for trick-or-treaters but didn't spy a one. Where was everyone but me? My money says downtown at the parade.

It's the kind of thing that makes me glad to live here, in a town that's still a town, and I admit to a twinge of disappointment that our girl scouts didn't participate this year for reasons unknown to me. I mean, I almost went alone. It's just a parade, but it's a good one, a 90-year old one, with an ancient PA announcer and a long-established route, and I like to sit on the courthouse steps and watch the politickers and the band kids, the families and the floats. It's the kind of thing I'd like to bring Juan to, when he says things like this so dismissively:

"America is too new. You can't believe anything here."

To be fair, it was an insightful answer, actually , Juan's el dia de los muertos explanation of why it makes sense to believe in ghosts in Mexico but not, in his experience, here. It's all about family and real spirits, he says, not monsters and pretend. When a family home has been occupied for generations, he tells me, in so many words, someone is more likely to be left behind. "It's part of the culture," someone adds, and he tells his ghost story for a minute, engaged in the topic and connected to home. But, and here's my catch, I know he doesn't really believe there's any place so deserving in America, any place with enough history or community to count. The U.S. is cheap apartments and trailer parks as far as he can see. And the nice houses, they're new, and the families? Who knows. The aisles at Wal-Mart. Restaurant kitchens. The images on TV. That's so much of the United States to him, and we both bristle at the thought.

My late October tradition, of course, wouldn't mean much of anything to this thoughtful teenager, but it might feel more real than the brittle plastic America that he's mostly seen so far. Though, I don't know, probably it wouldn't. "Why do you people do it that way?" is always the cross-cultural subtext, and this kid's been half in a culture shock funk for a year. The same way he wishes he were back home, I wish he could see there is something to America, something he's still missing. Why do I care? Same reason he does. It's just mine, and I want him to get it. Maybe I just want it to be true. Though if he persists with this "too new" to matter meme, I guess I could call in Angela from China and have her tell him a thing or two about old.