Accompanied by their parents, little ghouls and goblins enjoyed a safe and happy Halloween on Rice’s Main Street Oct. 30, the day before official Halloween.
The second annual event, dubbed “Trick or Treat on Main Street,” sponsored by the Rice Area Chamber of Commerce, was again a huge success, with a steady stream of trick-or-treaters traipsing from one business to another, all of which gave generous fists-full of candy and even some non-sweet treats, like little flashlights. At least two dozen Rice area businesses participated in the event.
Although the afternoon was chilly, with a nippy wind, nobody young or old seemed to mind. Children sported just about every costume imaginable: a little lamb, a firefighting dalmatian, a skunk, batman, Spiderman, several clowns, a couple of fairy princesses, a pint-sized police girl, Dracula, a honey bee, lots of witches, a Ninja warrior, skeletons galore and more. It was obvious parents and the children themselves spent many hours planning and then donning their costumes, many of them hand-made.
Outside of the Old Creamery Café, Carol Propper of St. Stephen sat in a chair next to a small cackling rubber witch and gave candy to the costumed children. She admitted it was a bit chilly to be sitting in the wind, but she said seeing the delighted children made any discomfort all worth it.
“They are all so cute,” she said, smiling. “And they’re having such a good time! Their parents too.”
Dalman was born and raised in South St. Cloud, graduated from St. Cloud Tech High School, then graduated from St. Cloud State University with a degree in English (emphasis on American and British literature) and mass communications (emphasis on print journalism). He studied in London, England for a year (1980-81) where he concentrated on British literature, political science, the history of Great Britain and wrote a book-length study of the British writer V.S. Naipaul. Dalman has been a reporter and weekly columnist for more than 30 years and worked for 16 of those years for the Alexandria Echo Press.