CHAGRIN FALLS -- It took forever to start but the 42nd annual pumpkin roll finally got underway about 1:30 a.m. Monday atop Grove Hill here. Police brought it to a close about 2:35 a.m. and there was one arrest -- one boy for underage consumption of alcohol.

What were they waiting for?

About 1:35 a.m. Monday, one resident watched as about 60 to 70 Chagrin Falls High School juniors and seniors walked en masse up the middle of North Main Street from downtown Chagrin Falls in the 36-degree weather.

Under a nearly full moon, they walked up Grove Hill, a departure from the usual routine, where the teens gather atop the hill and wait for truck loads of pumpkins to meet them there.

One parent said the teens had planned to start the roll about 11:45 p.m. Sunday but delayed the start because "too many parents found out about the roll and planned to come and watch and they didn't want them there."

The roll, a non-school-sanctioned event, has been a tradition at the school since the 1960s. It started out as a quick "dump and run" manuever, with students pulling up, tossing the pumpkins out of cars and trucks, then driving away before they were caught.

The students steal the pumpkins from homes and businesses throughout the Chagrin Valley in the weeks leading up to Halloween.

They keep the actual night of the roll a secret beforehand but it usually occurs around Halloween.

Over the past 15 or 20 years, the students started smashing hundreds of pumpkins on the hill. Then they grab plastic sleds, saucers, even plastic wading pools and recycling bins, and take turns sliding down the hill on the leftover slime from the smashed pumpkins.

Police always barricade the streets leading to Grove Hill for safety reasons during the roll.

The village service department arrives after the roll concludes, scraping up the goo with front-end loaders and dumping the pumpkin remains in an open ravine near Evergreen Hill cemetery.

Then the fire department hoses any remaining slime off the hill before it is reopened to traffic.