Hello Everyone! Welcome to this issue of Tidbits of the Lake Area. I trust everyone is preparing for the seasonal changes ahead. We are always busy around here... I still have one air conditioner to get out of the window... hope your doing a little better than me. I also have vowed to get the snow shovel out of the back yard BEFORE the snow covers it up this year.
Last week I said I would try to answer some questions about Tidbits here in the paper... so, for those people that are not familiar our weekly publication I want to address the biggest question... What Is Tidbits?
Let's start with what we are not... Tidbits of the Lake Area is not a newspaper. There are many, many excellent local newspapers in our territory that do a great job covering their communities in depth. We are not an all advertising shopper, there are some very robust products that fall into that category. What we are is an Entertainment Paper. Our goal is to provide a fun, family-friendly and 100% FREE product for everyone in Northeast South Dakota and West Central Minnesota to enjoy. I like to encourage people to take a "Tidbits Timeout" once a week. Grab a pencil and your Tidbits paper, turn off the TV and other devices and learn a bit, laugh a bit and try out the crossword or sudoku puzzles and exercise your brain. Just to let you know, as Tidbits continues to grow, you will begin to see more and more content. We have tons of other interesting articles, new puzzles and features to bring you. What we can put in each week is determined by our valued businesses that advertise their products and services with us. So, be sure to thank them for helping bring Tidbits to you each week.

"Spooks", the game.
I hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween holiday last week. I thought I would share a little story about a game my cousins and I played around Halloween at my folks' place as kids. My dad is one of 13 brothers and sisters and my mom is one of 4, so you can imagine around the holidays the number different cousins I had the pleasure of spending time with. One game we would play was called "Spooks". Very simply put, we would all line up shoulder to shoulder at night and begin walking across our yard toward the dark abyss of the woods on the other side. This yard was large enough to play football in and was lit by a single 100 watt light bulb from the porch. As we walked further and further into the dark we would try to scare each other into running back to the house and the last one to not get "spooked" was the winner.
On this one particular night, there was probably 8-10 of us playing. We were getting pretty brave after a couple times, and we were all having a good time. So... being the oldest, I fabricated a story about needing to go into the house and do something or other and told the rest to get ready and go ahead without me this time. As you can guess there was nothing that I "had to do in the house"... except sneak out the side door, head down by the garden, through trees on the edge of the yard and wait behind the big pine tree.
Well, the line started across the yard, and a couple of the younger ones "spooked" right away, but my cousins Laura and Lisa and my sister Cheryl were determined to get across the yard. I waited until they were about 3/4 of the way across, where you are really getting into the "dark", and I jumped out screaming my best scary movie scream... which I heard for only a split second before a chorus of high pitched screams drowned me out. Now if anyone ever watched Scooby Doo as a kid (or adult) you know the "feet spinning in the air trick" whenever Shaggy and Scooby were running from a ghost... we'll I got to see that in real life, and it was awesome. Well... until the adults came out to find out what the heck was going on and everyone pointed at me saying "he scared us half to death!"... all I could think was: Umm... wasn't that the point?

Thanks again for picking up Tidbits. When you are done with this issue please share it with your friends, family and neighbors. Have a great week!!