Every year for as long as we’ve been here (see footnote), Spruce Hill has put together a magnificent Halloween parade. Hundreds of kids in varying states of costume gather with family and friends down at the park, awaiting a cadence from the Penn drumline, which signals the parade is underway. The crowd squeezed down to city sidewalk width and stretched out for a couple blocks, jamming traffic on Baltimore in either direction as 200 Spider-men, 45 Phillies, a goblin, a bumblebee, 3 three-quarters of a zebra, a collection of jedi flailing plastic lightsabers, and assorted other alter egos (including at least one hot dog) crossed the street.
Emma remained most of a zebra, shooting down our every attempt to get her headgear on with such stubborn resolve that not only did the zebra head never crown her, it ended up on the head of every other adult in the vicinity. This is about as close as we got to realizing the full zebra costume, somewhere along Baltimore in the midst of marching.
The parade wound around the block and finished on a pretty and pretty narrow stretch of Osage, where donuts, cookies, cider, popcorn and other more processed forms of corn were served under the remaining leaves of the plane trees.
Emma quickly discovered animal crackers were available. As with most of the proceedings, she took her role–in this case, the eating of crackers–very seriously.
After tasting of the cider and of the fruit of the corn, we headed back home to do our part handing out candy. The neighbors had warned us we could expect several hundred trick-or-treaters. This seemed absurd to me, but the neighbors claimed, with a note of supressed panic, to have bought huge quantities of processed sugarstuff to fend off the hordes of Halloween blackmailers. We ended up buying 600 pieces of candy and ran out of everything by about quarter to eight.
Emma herself spent a good part of the evening handing out candy. At the prompting of her grandpa, she took to saying BOO to the scarier costumes as she threw a boxes of nerds and pre-smashed Snickers into bags. Before the flood of kids arrived, Emma sipped lightly from her cup of animal crackers and redistributed some of the candy across the porch.
She can’t wait for the time when she’ll join the fortune ones whose mouths are sealed with Milk Duds.
Halloween is serious business here, and it takes a kid with the endurance of a zebra and the candy resources of William Wonka, Esq., to do it up right.
Footnote: since 2009.
