Katie Miller and her aunt, Janice Blatt, had just finished tying the plastic bags placed over their chairs piled around a sign post in front of a bank in Hanover.

"That's in case it rains," said Miller, of McSherrystown, as she and Blatt stood on Baltimore Street.

Time: 4:46 p.m.

They, like hundreds of others, came out to Baltimore and Carlisle streets in downtown Hanover to stake their claim for the annual Hanover Halloween Parade.

Like the Miss Hanover Area Pageant on Monday, trick-or-treating on Tuesday and the parade tonight, placing places to sit is an annual tradition for Halloween week in Hanover.

And after placing chairs for the 69th annual parade Wednesday, residents in the know stood and waited until 5 p.m.

Following a tradition started by former Hanover Mayor Maggie Hormel, Mayor Gary Brown decreed chairs cannot be placed along the parade route until 5 p.m. the day before the Thursday parade.

In recent years, borough officials have been lax about the 5 p.m. rule. Chairs were seen along Route 94 as early as 11 a.m. the Wednesday before the parade last year.

Things were different this year.

Brown and Borough Manager Bruce Rebert said they'd collected a half-dozen chairs before 10 a.m. In all, they removed about a dozen chairs and ropes. After 2:30 p.m., they began pushing the chairs off the edge of the sidewalk and up against the buildings.

"We heard too many reports that we don't enforce (the 5 p.m. rule)," Brown said. "People were

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trying to take advantage."

At Wednesday's council meeting, Rebert showed photos of some of the chairs retrieved -- including several that were chained with a padlock to a signpost in front of the library.

"We took bolt cutters to remove them," Rebert told the council, "which is a shame because it looked like a new chain and a new lock. Probably worth more than the chairs."

It was the 5 p.m. rule that led Miller and Blatt to stand by their chairs until 5 p.m.

"They come out at 4 p.m. and steal 'em," Miller said.

WHERE ARE MY CHAIRS?

Anyone whose chairs were confiscated by borough officials can pick them up at the mayor's office at 44 Frederick St.

Also of interest

· Hanover's old State Theater: 'Don't lose hope, it's not dead'

· How Hanover's Eichelberger school morphed into 'The Eich.'

· Why is Hanover Country Club in Abbottstown?