In the beginning

Once upon a time the City of Kearney, Missouri sponsored a "Kids Day in the Park" every year in August. Alas, the last couple of years they had it; it started to fade. They were having a hard time finding volunteers, let alone someone to coordinate and run it. In fact, in 2001 there wasn't even one at all due to the lack of participation.

After the city saw the sets I built for "The Wizard of Oz", they apparently thought I would be a good candidate to coordinate the "Kids Day in the Park" for 2002. (Or maybe they realized I was just a big kid at heart with a lot of wacky ideas!) One of the local banks held Kids Fest each year about 2 weeks apart from the city's "Kids Day in the Park" and they were basically the same thing. I told the city that I would do it if I could move it to October and put a Halloween theme to it. I guess they figured anything was better than nothing, so they foolishly handed it over to me.

The first thing I wanted to do was create an enchanted forest, but there were no woods in Lions Park so I moved it to Mack Porter Park. I also knew that I would be dealing with all ages of kids so I couldn't have anything scary in it at all, but I didn't want the older kids to be bored either. With Halloween running through my blood I had to have something scary or it wouldn't be Halloween, so I created the Musical Misfits. I figured that way I get to have my "scary" but the children that are scared of the mask and monsters didn't have to get close enough to be afraid. They could still enjoy the sights and sounds of Halloween.

I rounded up a handful of very dedicated volunteers, bought some handouts, built some instruments, carved out a path through the woods, rented a moonwalk, built a flimsy cardboard maze, got a couple of haywagons and the first "Halloween Hallows" was formed.

We held it two days figuring that one of the weekends would be rained out... and it wasn't. The volunteers said two weekends were too hard to commit to, so the second year we held it one day and had more kids than I ever imagined. Around 285 to the best of our calculations.

This being our third year, I realized that it looks like I'm in it for the long haul so I figured I better get a little more organized and try to do it right. I moved it over to the Jesse James Festival Grounds for liability purposes. We then carved and mulched a path through the woods at our new home, moved the pirate ship over to its new permanent home (which was no fun feat), built the "Pit of Doom" (a human foosball table), tried to round up a few more volunteers and off we went again. We were planning on 300 to 400 kids this year, but were astounded to learn at last count we had over 500 children. We gave out over 300 pumpkins, over 400 apples and over 2500 hand-outs. This year the children were also allowed to make a "Halloween Hallows" button of their choice to keep and wear and were able to make their own sand art bottle. The maze was bigger and better and even had a section that went through the woods. (I personally think the adults enjoyed the maze more than the kids did.) And the 3 haywagons went nonstop all day long.

Now it's 2005 and I'm looking forward to even more handouts and possibly bigger crowds and more fun then ever. So, thank you for making Halloween Hallows successful and I hope to see you again this fall.