Durham's The Herald-Sun, 97Oct30, page 6
Candied apples. Fresh gingerbread. Homemade cookies and doughnuts - all sorts of treats that Safe Halloween advisories and urban folklore both hold likely to turn out nasty tricks.
Once upon a time, though, that was unremarkable trick-or-treating fare, When little witches and ghosties set out, without escort, while their elders sat waiting for the neighbors' spooks with no thought of razors in the fruit or real ghoulies in the shadows.
True, it was but a brief interlude between toppling the outhouse and present paranoia. But it is remembered, in fact and in fuzzies, and it's the hook for a Durham group's "Enoween."
Sunday p.m., 2 to 4 and rain or shine, homeowners-to-be in the development-in-progress are old-time treating each others' kids and any other who come by, from the homesites they expect to occupy by next summer. In part, it's a way to give the kids a concrete - well, more red mud - sense of the place they've only heard adults talk about living. In part, it's a ritual of the sort of neighborhood they have in mind.
Eno Commons, at the end of Hillock Place off Umstead Road, is a 22-household exercise in "cohousing." Each household will own its home and lot, but much of the 11-acre site will be communal, managed by the homeowner.
Homes are clustered, with front porches facing a sidewalk. Cars are kept to the periphery and open space abounds. At the cluster center there is a commons house mostly devoted to kitchen and dining room for neighborhood meals several times a week.
"It's not quite the old small-town feeling, but it's sort of a '90s version," said Margaret Donnelly. Her infant daughter, Rivka, slept in a sling over her chest, while 3-year-old Ezra splashed in a puddle near the family homesite.
For Donnelly, Eno Commons is a step up from nuclear family/cul-de-sac suburbs. She likes a neighborhood's worth of adult as part of her kids' growing up and the mutual support no longer available from extended families.
Prospective residents have been in on the planning of Eno Commons almost since the start. That's part of the idea of cohousing, a movement that started in Denmark. There are about 26 occupied cohousing developments in the U.S. now and the number is doubling yearly, said Sherri Rosenthal, Eno Commons' developer - or, as they call it in the movement, "burning soul." ("It probably sounds better in Danish," she said.)
Cohousing developments vary in size and degree of communalism, and there are various reasons people like them. There is the security of known neighbors. There is a generally green complexion. There is neighborliness deeper than "How do?" in the street.
"It's people who want to live in a neighborhood where they can have a maximum of interaction with their neighbors, who want to have good neighbors and be good neighbors," said owner Bill Davis.
Eno Commons folk come across so enthusiastic and genuine, it feels mean to wonder how long such associations can last. But buying into cohousing doesn't mean one will stay there.
Jobs, marriages, health and dispositions change and set people in motion. Urban anonymity can be relief from too much familiarity. Close quarters, physical and psychic, are one thing where numbers and geography have dictated them for generations - quite another where open spaces from the start framed the American reference.
But such associations are a counter, Rosenthal says, to the cynicism a disappointed age equates with smarts. And from the personal isolation that helps turn Halloween from one-night fantasy to year-round scared and scary. "The real story ... it's about things like Enoween," said Rosenthal. "They don't even have a house on the site, but they feel they have a neighborhood."
Have a comment, or a suggestion for a column? You may contact Jim Wise by phone at 419-6680 or e-mail at jew@herald-sun.com