Centralia celebrates Halloween in style with two Halloween Parades and the Fall Festival on Saturday. The activity culminates with the 98th Annual Centralia Halloween Parade at seven Saturday night down its traditional route of Poplar Street. The theme this year is “Frights, Lights, and Delights,” and the parade will be led by Grand Marshal Chuck Melton and St. Mary’s Grade School student Elizabeth Hanson, who was the winner of this year’s theme contest.
Parade Chair Butch Mathus says this year’s parade will have more than 110 entries, including 36 floats and six bands.
“I don’t look for quantity, I look for quality,” Mathus said. “That’s what makes a parade. You can have 200 people, but does that make a parade? No, it doesn’t. What makes it is the quality, and that’s what I try to strive for. It’s wonderful, we’ve got a lot of wonderful floats that are going to be in this parade. We’ve got a couple of surprises.”
The second parade is the Kiddies Parade that will have judging of costumes at ten and then step off from Library Park through downtown at eleven. Mathus says there have been some changes.
“This year, we took a couple divisions out. We put in a group of family entries, because there are a lot of parents that dress up with kids that want to be as a group, so we put that in. It’s been building up for the last couple of years, so we look forward to that.”
In addition, for the first time four by fours or golf carts will be allowed to pull floats in the children’s parade. Mathus says that is being tried this year due to the larger size of the floats that are becoming difficult to pull by hand.
There will be plenty to do in Centralia besides the parades.
Kayla Lambert is heading the Fall Festival.
“Day events kick off at 9:30 in the morning,” Lambert said. “We’ve got the Centralia High School marching band to kick off our entertainment, and the color guard will be joining them on Locust Street. The children’s game area also kicks off at 9:30 with the annual mummy wrap challenge. The rest of the day, we’ve got the annual craft fair that will be held at the rec center, we’ve got the chili cook-off that will start at noon, and we’ve got a car show that’s happening downtown.”
Lambert says there is also an area for the kids.
“In the kids’ game area they have inflatables, all sorts of different kid activities, face painting, and pony rides will be available. A lot of activities will be happening downtown. At one o’clock, we will have the best dressed pet contest.”
Lambert says there will also be various vendors throughout the festival area.
You’ll be able to listen to live coverage of the 98th Annual Halloween Parade on WJBD-FM 100.1 beginning around seven Saturday night.
