OCTOBER 31, FRIDAY

HALLOWEEN IN MARSHALL

Years ago my wife Kathe and I would go to my grandchildren’s house on Melrose Avenue and observe our two granddaughters, Caroline and Hannah, dressed in Halloween costumes and went from house to house with bags collecting candy. Trick or treat they would proclaim with the implication that if the people didn’t give them candy they would trick them somehow. But really is was a time kids were praised for how scary they looked in their costumes and a chance to be given candy which presumably, later, made most of them sick to their stomachs. It was a community event which allowed everyone on the street to connect with each other.

From my mother I had heard stories of how people in the little farming town of Buffalo, Illinois, really did play tricks on each other, the most awful trick being in the middle of the night picking up people’s outhouses and moving them four feet so that when someone stumbled down to the toilet before dawn that would fall into the hole filled with excrement.

But after my granddaughters grew up we stopped going to Melrose Avenue on Halloween and with no children living on our street let Halloween slide by unnoticed.

But in Marshall today the celebration was tremendous fun with both parents and children dressed up in outlandish costumes and all the store and restaurant owners giving out candy. The streets were full of people. This was one of the times when everyone in Marshall, the traditional oldtimers and the newcomers just trying to fit in, celebrated together and enjoyed each other’s company

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I took a number of photographs and will stretch them over the next few days.