Hobgoblins On Main Street

I attended the 26th annual Hobgoblins on Main Street in downtown Stuart, Florida yesterday afternoon, and it was a fun, very family-oriented event. It was also very nostalgic, because it reminded me very much of Halloween back in the South Side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago when I was a kid. The downtown area of Brainerd was a block long, with shops and restaurants on both sides of the street, just like the main part of downtown Stuart. And every year, at least in the lower grades, we would dress up in costumes on Halloween and walk from Fort Dearborn Grammar School to downtown Brainerd, where we would walk past the stores where the merchants would be standing out in front handing out candy. Which is what all the kids, led by their parents, were doing as we walked to the Stuart Promenade, where the Hobgoblins on Main Street event was being held. Nice to know some places still do those things.

On the Riverwalk Stage, they were having a costume contest, evidently divided into categories, but there were so many people there it was impossible to get a photograph. In the parking lot next to the promenade, booths were set up by local businesses and organizations, as seen in the photograph on the right. One booth featured face painting and tattoos, although personally, I don't think parents should let their children under 5 to get a tattoo. They might regret it by the time they get out of college and start looking for a job.

One of the merchants with a booth was Aycock Funeral Home, which also had a hearse decorated with cobwebs and an assortment of skeletons and demons on display, as well as a table touting their services. Which to me was a little creepy. Halloween is supposed to be all about fun, and seeing a hearse as part of a display seems like kind of a downer. It reminded me that Aycock was the funeral home my mother Mary choose when my father Nelson passed away at 74. But on the other hand, if the kids get a kick out of it, what the hell.

Another organization at the event were the Ghostbusters, who had their car, Ecto-1, on display. I have seen other Ghostbuster cars in Denver, and so I assume this is now a franchise, and there are Ghostbusters all over the country, working to get especially troublesome ghosts out of haunted houses, or wherever they might be. There is an apartment building near downtown Stuart called The France on Frazier Creek that was built in the 1920s, and many residents say that it is haunted. But this particular ghost appears to be a neat-freak and helpful ghost, tidying the place up and putting things back where it thinks their proper place should be. Now that is the kind of ghost I would like to haunt my place. I wonder if the Ghostbusters team also has the ability to deliver a ghost like that to me. I have a porch that desperately needs to be painted.