Did you go to National Night Out? We did. It's good to see the neighbors and chat. You wave to a fellow every day for a year, but until you're both standing with a plate of wings and beer you don't talk about the things that matter, like the old elm on the corner. She's coming down. He did his best; had it treated as often as the experts recommended. No matter. Two weeks ago, the orange ring of doom appeared. We never see the people who paint them; I imagine cadaverous city employees on skeleton horses like the dark riders in "Lord of the Rings," sweeping through the streets at 3 AM, their ghastly cackle making dogs stir uneasily in their sleep.

In our neighborhood we do this two, three times a year, often without national tie-ins. Someone holds a Christmas party; there's the increasingly legendary Halloween party at the end of the block, and the NNO Block Party. This year's installment: merry. The food: delicious. I'm guessing a few guys may have been wifeless this week, because they brought pizzas. Even so, the remnant power of their wives reached telepathically across the expanse of space, and said "NOT TOTINOS." You always end up eating too much, and leave feeling like a grenade made out of brownies, the pin freshly pulled.

Not much talk about crime. We have crime, but it's the sort of stuff you can't solve with a block party. Attention, everyone! Don't forget to close your garages at night! Murmurs, nods of heads, dawning enlightenment: by Jove, he might be on to something. Aside from the fact that we were all standing in one place in the middle of the street, there wasn't anything unusual about the evening; people are always outside. It's the key to a good neighborhood - dog walkers, joggers, families with the stroller, kids in the front yard, a few suspicious coots eyeballing the perimeter.

National Night Out is a great idea, but I don't think it's reduced crime anywhere. At all. If you want to call it a good reason to have a block party and meet your neighbors, fine - but if that's the objective, I don't know why you have to buy special "NNO promotional products." Neighborhoods are perfectly capable of having block parties without trademarked logos and national coordination. Right?