HALLOWEEN
Halloween is a time for dressing up in outlandish costumes with children going from house to house asking for candy. Trick or treat is what children sing out, promising a trick if they don’t get candy, but the days of tricks are gone and all that matters is treats.
But I attended the Halloween party thrown by Chadd who operates the tattoo parlor in Marshall. No children stopped by. Chad’s shop had been completely flooded and immersed in mud and is still empty. The mud has been cleaned away. Chad has no electricity and no water, used a generator to light up his party with strings of lights, surrounded by the darkness of empty stores of Marshall with no lights at all. There were a few street lights in town but no stop light and no one was wandering the streets trick or treating.
For Chad this seemed to be a time of catharsis. He spent two days decorating in front of his shop, borrowing some tents from Nanostead. And even on this Halloween night he was decorating at 7 when the party began and kept at it until 6 a.m. the next morning after the party broke up.
There were six people at the party, all dressed in costumes except me except for a huge lion mask that I wore for my photographs. People sat in semi darkness drinking beer and talking. In spite of Chad’s heroic efforts the gloom of hurricane Helene wasn’t dispelled, although the party seemed to greatly raise Chad’s spirits.
Everyone was photographed in front of Chad’s shop sign ending with a group photograph of everyone at 9 a.m. when I went home.
I came back the next day to bring Susie to her car which she had left in Marshall and took a few more photographs in daylight.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 