There’s hardly anything spooky at the Halloween-decorated Manteca house at 911 E. North St. for a good reason.
Lenny Rieb didn’t want to frighten young trick-or-treaters.
For the past 12 years or so, he’s decorated his home with strings of lights – primarily orange, in this case – along the trees in his front yard coupled with plenty of inflatables characters.
His large Frankenstein’s monster head is among his original inflatables and he came across the pirate ship one about two years ago at a yard sale.
While the Rieb house isn’t the only one in town that’s decorated for the occasion, Lenny was all but forced to put his Halloween showcase up on the morning of Oct. 31.
Winds and rains from the weekend served as a threat to his prized inflatables – he has about 15 altogether – so Rieb waited out for calm conditions to put up and anchor down his displays.
So it happened that about 8:30 a.m. Monday was the right time to finally get the ball rolling.
“I have it down pat on getting everything put together,” said Rieb, who still had several stringed lights bundled up at noon.
“It takes about an hour and half to put up the lights (along the trees and bushes),” he added.
By the time all’s said and done, Rieb along with wife, Teresa, who is the longtime Manteca Unified employee (she’s the office manager for the Manteca Adult program), spent the evening distributing Halloween candies.
Their can’t-miss Halloween home is located directly across the street from St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, which hosts its annual Safe Halloween Monday night.
“We usually get a lot of kids from over there (at St. Paul’s) to over here,” said Lenny Rieb, who, according to his daughter Jaycee, were ready for the trick-or-treaters with about six big bags of candies.
In a few weeks, Lenny Rieb will decorate his house once again – he does a Thanksgiving theme followed by a Christmas theme.

To contact reporter Vince Rembulat, e-mail vrembulat@mantecabulletin.com.