LYNDONVILLE, VT — At a special session Tuesday night that ran fourteen minutes past its scheduled close, Caledonia County Fire Marshal Russell Tibbets announced that trick-or-treat in Lyndonville would this year run from 5:47 p.m. to 7:13 p.m., declined to take questions, and exited through a side door that has been locked since 2019.
Tibbets, who has held the post for eleven years and previously approved hours on round numbers like a reasonable person, offered no rationale for the eighty-six-minute window or its peculiar edges. The hours were final, he said, and would not be revisited “regardless of weather, daylight savings, or what any of you think you know about the moon.”
Donna Beasley, who teaches fourth grade at Lyndon Town School and has handed out candy in the same Bigfoot costume for nine consecutive Halloweens, said she stopped Tibbets in the parking lot to ask whether 7:15 might work better, given how the porch lights line up. Tibbets reportedly looked at her for a full eight seconds before answering. “It’s 7:13.”
The hours have already complicated logistics across town. Several parents noted that the recommended walking route from Park Avenue to the Methodist church takes roughly seventeen minutes, which leaves a household budget of either too few houses or two extra Reese’s per stop, depending on pace. A printed schedule from the Selectboard, distributed Wednesday, includes a single footnote reading: “Do not contact the Fire Marshal.”
Tibbets’s only public comment came Wednesday afternoon outside Powers Market, where he was buying a single banana. Pressed once more on the specific minutes, he told a reporter, “I have my reasons. They are good ones. They are not yours.” He then drove off in a department pickup that idled at the stop sign for several seconds longer than seemed strictly necessary.
Some residents have quietly speculated about an obscure fire-code subclause involving sunset angles; others believe Tibbets is simply tired. Mrs. Hennigan, who lives across from the firehouse, said her husband Earl thinks it has something to do with the eclipse, “though Earl thinks a lot of things have to do with the eclipse.”
At the Caledonia County offices Thursday morning, a deputy clerk confirmed that no formal grievance procedure exists for challenging a fire marshal’s holiday hours, and added, with a sympathy that read as practiced, that a woman from Pinehurst Street had already asked.
As of Thursday afternoon, three houses on Pinehurst had taped the times to their storm doors in 48-point font. The rest of town has quietly decided that 5:47 means 5:47, and that whatever Russell Tibbets knows about the night of October 31st, he is keeping for himself.