Just after 8 p.m. on Halloween night 20 high school students gathered in the parking lot of the pool. They waited for a few minutes to see if any stragglers were going to show up – one was dropped off by a parent – and then got down to business.
First, they decided on three locations: the Bamboo Room, the cannon at Fort Seward, and a bike rack outside of the high school.
Then, they split up into cops, robbers, and runners.
The game is relatively straightforward: the cops drive around looking for robbers who are on foot. If they see one, the runners hop out, chase them down and try to ‘tag’ them. The robbers, meanwhile, run through town trying to get photo evidence of themselves touching each landmark without being caught.
For the first round, the cops were Selby Long – with three runners in her car and Kruze Nettleton and one runner in an old model Ford Ranger with a distinctive carved pumpkin wedged over his rooftop beacon light. Every few seconds bright orange light flashed from its mouth and eyes.
Everyone else took off on foot while Long and Nettleton waited for a minute to give them a head start. Then, they’re off.
In Long’s car, they headed straight for the Bamboo room. She pulled into the parking lot and shut off her lights. As the four talked, a group of robbers approached on the opposite side of the building – hiding in the shadows of a pool of light in the alleyway.
They may have gone unnoticed except for a nudge from this reporter, causing Long’s three runners to leap out of the car and take off after them. They returned, jubilant, breathing heavily and congratulating Isabelle Alamillo for tagging one of them.
“I got Gage, I’m done,” she said.
As the group caught their breath and headed for the cannon at Fort Seward, the conversation shifted to safety.
“I always get scared chasing because I feel like I’m going to fall on my face on the concrete,” Isabelle said.
At one point, Long said she was nervous that she might hit someone in her car because no one was wearing reflective gear, though it might be hard to convince people who are trying to hide to do that.
The group slowed on a darkened street near the cannon.
“There’s other cars parked here so it’s not going to look weird if I park here,” Long said, as she pulled up and turned off her light again.
The girls all hopped out and decided to wait by the cannon to see who approached.
A few minutes later a boy approached cautiously with his cell phone light on. It’s Junior JC Davis.
“Is that a cop?,” he yelled. “I see you.”
A few children walked out of a nearby house party, talking about their candy and watching curiously as the drama unfolded.
“Who are you?” one of the girls asks.
“This is puppy guarding guys,” Davis said, turning off his light and backing away into the darkness.
“So what?” one of the girls yelled back, laughing.
Later on Davis explained that puppy garden means to guard a “safe” spot during the game – forcing others to get tagged when they approach.
But in this case, he just waited for them to leave and then circled back around to get his photo. In fact, Davis managed to evade capture entirely in the first round. As most of the group gathered back in the parking lot of the pool, he jogged up the road and got his final photo near the bike rack.
When asked about his winning prize, Davis said he’s in it for the glory.
Davis, like many others in the group, said he doesn’t know when the game became a tradition. He first heard about it from his older brother Luke Davis, a Haines high graduate who is now away at college in Eastern Oregon.
Senior Emma Dohrn figures it must be at least five years old because she was told about it her freshman year and has been doing it every year since.
“The seniors always organize it,” she said. “We do it again like in the spring or summer too. I don’t remember when.”
After the first round, everyone regrouped and a handful of new kids showed up, ready to jump in.
Nettleton, who wanted to play again, started asking around for someone to take over and drive his truck. But, alas, no one seemed to know how to drive a manual.
Nettleton said for the second round, he wanted to be a robber and to run.
“Driving around is kind of boring,” he said, with a grin.