From the October 27, 1995 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:
To a number of Vineyard residents, Halloween is no small observance. At Shirley’s Hardware in Vineyard Haven, the staff treat the annual day of Hallow’s Eve as a big event.
For Mary McManama, who has worked at the store for 22 years, this is a big event. About 20 feet of shelving area in the new store is devoted exclusively to witch hats, latex masks and plastic pumpkins.
Over the years, Miss McManama has worked to expand the hardware store’s coverage of Halloween. It is part of the seasonal change. The garden tool supplies, the shovels, flower pots and hedge clippers come down and the Halloween costumes go up.
Where else can you spend $4.99 for a King’s crown? The cost of the items range from just under a dollar to $30 for a costume. Miss McManama said she began ordering the Halloween supplies back in August. The supplies come from as far away as Georgia and Texas. The most popular items available this year are squirting eyeballs for $1.99 and long black wings. The most expensive costume is a catwoman for $33.99.
Polly Maciel of West Tisbury was in shopping on Wednesday. Holding up the costume of a skunk, she asked a friend whether this was an appropriate costume. She is the manager of Araujo Brothers, an company that does septic system pumpouts. This weekend, she said, she is going on a cruise to Mexico. She thought she might wear the costume then.
The store’s popularity does have its bad side. Leann Curley of Edgartown came into the store hunting for bats.
“We are sold out. We sold the last one yesterday,” came Miss McManama’s reply.
After scanning the wall carefully, Richard Lee of West Tisbury praised the store’s Halloween Lady. “You do a better job each year,” he said.
For Jesse Steere, the owner of the store, this is the best display they’ve ever done.
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The Mercier sisters of Edgartown — Carol, Emily and Celia — are dressing up as a threesome of robots. Willie Simon of Chilmark, nine years old, wants to be the Joker from Batman. And six-year-old Albion Alley of Tisbury is trying to decide between going out as a tarantula or Paul McCartney.
Halloween is Tuesday, and the festive night of ghouls and goblins is home to a unique phenomenon on Martha’s Vineyard, where many kids live in rural neighborhoods unfit for the traditional rounds of trick-or-treating. It’s called Halloween town-hopping, and it’s becoming increasingly popular among parents in remote Island areas.
Here’s how it works: Parents load up the car with kids and drive them elsewhere on the Island for trick-or-treating. The goal is better trick-or-treating and better candy loot, kids say.
As a result, prime downtown neighborhoods in Oak Bluffs, Vineyard Haven and Edgartown are swamped with up-Island kids looking for a dose of the real Halloween experience. But no one seems to mind the extra company of tricksters.
“You see the kids arrive in carloads,” says Mary Rentschler, mother of young Albion Alley and resident of Lake street, one of the Vineyard’s prime trick-or-treating ‘hoods. “It’s pretty hilarious, but this is a great trick-or-treat town.”
Ned Robinson-Lynch of West Tisbury says he takes his kids, Gabe (1995 costume: A Vampire) and Elana (The Moon), to a residential area along Skiff avenue in Tisbury. “It’s more of the neighborhood thing,” he says. “We go down with friends, and we know a couple of people who live in the area.”
Susan Mercier plans to troop her daughters from their home off the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road to the downtown area that includes stately homes along South Water street. “We take the girls where my husband used to trick-or-treat,” she says. “They love it, and they do well with trick-or-treats. Too well.”
Still, some rural areas on the Vineyard make a valiant stab at trick-or-treating. On Chappaquiddick, parents of Halloween-aged kids organize a brief residential tour consisting of about “five or six” houses, says parent Margaret Knight.
“We set a route up ahead of time. We’re a bit more organized,” Mrs. Knight says. “We don’t want to just show up at somebody’s house, because for a lot of these people, nobody ever comes to their house.”
In Gay Head, the parks and recreation department makes a list of all the local houses with candy. When the tour is finished, the kids go to a town-wide Halloween party, says Sylvie Vandal, mother of Misha (Grim Reaper) and Amelie (masquerade ball lady).
If you can’t find the right neighborhood for trick-or-treating, there’s still plenty left to do on Halloween night. In addition to the Gay Head party, there are similar occasions in Chilmark, West Tisbury and in Vineyard Haven.
But some parents and kids will be searching for a good neighborhood to tour with a bag and a mask. Says Willie Simon’s father, Peter: “It’s pretty hard to go trick-or-treating in a place like Chilmark.”
Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
library@vineyardgazette.com