New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
‘WE ALL NEED TO LAUGH’
After 15 years, couple’s ‘cheeky’ tiki Halloween display is their last
Jeannie Tremont’s family has always been into practical jokes.
“Even to this day, we have quite the sense of humor — always have,” the New Milford woman said.
Every Halloween for the past 15 years, she has put her penchant for humor into practice by decorating her front lawn on Grove Street for the holiday with elaborate, full-sized dummies made of hay and extravagantly decorated props she and her husband, Thomas Tremont, create.
There’s a different theme every year, including “Chili cook off,” “Dog playing poker” and “The dating game.”
This year’s theme is a “cheeky tiki bar,” and features a group of dummies gathered around a Hawaiian tiki bar, ordering drinks from a bartender. The tiki bar is made from an old tent frame and the top is made from an old bamboo fencing.
With the couple moving to New Hampshire, this year’s display will be their last in New Milford.
Creating the display
When Tremont first decided to decorate, she placed a dummy with a pumpkin as its bottom on her lawn. After receiving a positive response from the community, she decided to make it an annual event — including the pumpkin bottom.
“They moon people from the road,” she chuckled.
Her hobby is inexpensive, she said. She gets about 90 percent of the decorations for free.
Each dummy is stuffed
with hay, which she gets for free in a volunteer-run “re-use” hut in New Hampshire, where she also gets free clothing for the dummies.
“Everything is pretty much recycled or something that someone is going to throw away,” said Tremont, a mother of one and grandmother of three. “Sometimes, I’ll have friends look for something for me. I’ll be like, ‘Keep your eye out for barstools.’ ”
Some years, she has purchased hay at Kimberly Farm in New Milford.
The biggest cost are the pumpkins — about $80 a year, she said.
“It depends on how many people I’m going to have in my display because obviously I need two pumpkins for each person,” said Jeannie Tremont, 53, who drives a school van. Thomas Tremont, 55, works for an aerospace company.
She plans her theme over the summer and uses mainly new materials to decorate each year. It takes her about seven hours to put everything out.
“I recruit my husband
each year in helping me set up,” she said. “He thinks I’m crazy, but luckily, he goes along with my ideas.”
She said her grandchildren helped this year.
Halloween pranksters have pretty much left the pumpkin people alone.
“With the exception of one year when someone kept stealing the hair off the dummies, no one bothers with it,” she said.
Safety pins curb weatherrelated damage to the decorations.
“My husband screws everything that needs to be
screwed down,” she said. “It holds up pretty well.”
The day after Halloween, everything comes down.
“I have always just been anal (retentive) about taking down decorations after a holiday,” she said. “It’s time to move on.”
Aside from saving mannequin heads, which she usually finds at Goodwill, the rest of her items either get recycled or go into the trash.
But the pumpkins go to a friend whose pigs eat them.
Despite all the decorations, Jeannie Tremont said she’s lucky if she gets two trick-or-treaters each year.
“I think because it is just kind of busy area. It’s a longer driveway,” she said. “It’s not really a place they want to stop.”
Halloween is the only holiday Jeannie Tremont puts up decorations.
“April Fool’s Day is one of my favorite days, obviously, because I like to play jokes,” she said. “Halloween is probably my second favorite.”
“A lot of people will say it makes them smile. They enjoy seeing it on their way to work and they get a laugh out of it,” she said. “I’ve heard people drive by and hear them laughing in their car and it makes me feel good. People would wave and they’ll say ‘Thank you.’ ”
Moving on
This year’s display is bittersweet for Jeannie Tremont since it’s her last one in New Milford.
She and her husband moving to New Hampshire, where they own a home.
“We are ready for a simpler life. We want to live more off our land,” she said, adding they have family there.
She will not be decorating for Halloween in her new home, she said.
“My husband made me promise that when we move, he doesn’t want me to display anymore,” she said.
She said it has been a fun ride.
“I love this quote from Mark Twain: ‘The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter,’ ” she said. “Especially these days, people need that. We all need to laugh.”