Halloween brings out creativity

Letter from the Editor

Downtown Bigfork was filled with ghosts, dinosaurs and quite a few Transformers on Saturday as local businesses opened their doors for trick-or-treaters.

The streets were lined with dressed up children with their parents in tow.

I expected to see more of what a friend of mine did for Halloween – a plain white T-shirt with "Recession Halloween costume" written on it in black permanent marker. But, Electric Avenue was filled with creative costumes, some store bought but others that obviously required months of preparation.

I couldn't possibly have seen all of the costumes, even though I lost count of the number of times I circled the streets to capture images of the event, but here are a few of my favorites.

I saw parents with a young boy with a white beard in a wagon decorated as an ark, surrounded by his stuffed animals.

A young girl dressed as Rapunzel, complete with tower, was definitely one of the more original costume designs. Her yellow-yarn hair flowed down the outside of her gray cardboard tower.

Probably one of the most time-intensive costumes was a little boy dressed as a blue helicopter, which his parents paper-macheed and painted themselves.

It wasn't just the kids that were dressed up. Some families got into the spirit together.

I spotted a family dressed as the cast of "The Wizard of Oz," with the father as the lion, mother as Dorothy and child as the scarecrow.

I was surprised by Halloween in Bigfork as I waited at home after photographing several area events, with a full bowl of candy on the kitchen counter.

The bowl is still there, a telltale sign that I didn't get any trick-or-treaters this year.

In fact, I didn't see any out in the neighborhoods as I drove around. I talked to others who also didn't have any or had very few children knocking.

The door-to-door visits I remember from when I was young have been replaced by events like Halloween in the Village or Trunk R Treat in Lakeside, which allow families a contained environment with more candy earlier in the evening without having to wander neighborhoods looking for houses with lights on.

These 'safe" events are valuable for bringing the community as a whole to one place, but it makes me wonder why we are willing to take children downtown but not across the street. Maybe the relationships we used to have with our neighbors have changed and those who in previous decades would have been close friends are now strangers to us. It seems like Halloween would still be a good time to get to know them. Plus, they probably had candy.

-Jasmine Linabary