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Spooky Local Cultcha

It has been a long time since I’ve been to an event that included a high school marching band.

I saw more than one: the first one looked smart in their uniforms, the second group were wearing whatever they felt like, and the third band had a lot of kids in costumes. One boy playing the trumpet had a bright pink hat that must’ve been made out of shag carpet remnants.

Other signs of small town on parade: a VFW contingent, elementary schools with inexplicable themes (the Olympics, Literary Heroes), local businesses looking for free attention, and a championship little league team waving from a vehicle.

I expected more witches. It being Salem and all.

Instead, I saw several Batmen in strollers and artificially-muscled Spidermen under four feet. There were hippie chicks and fairies, ninjas and power rangers. What I thought was a forlorn looking chicken turned out to be a duck sulking about a lack of candy.

Some little girls wearing tiaras were obviously coached on making the non-wave wave, that little back and forth with the hand effected by royalty. I couldn’t tell they were doing it to be funny or not. I suspect not, if the intense facial expressions of the one girl in a green dress were any indication.

There was a lawn chair drill team.

I saw a group of those Red Hat ladies, but they weren’t performing, they were there to watch. The audience was a mix of tourists and locals, some managing to eat fried dough without getting powdered sugar on their jackets, others not caring about the hotdog mustard spurted down their shirts because they had masks on and no one could tell who they really were.