FARMINGTON – Eve Fuerstenberger, 10, squinted her eyes in the late afternoon sun and deliberately moved her paintbrush on the window’s surface in tiny arcs, creating what looked like a bat, seen from the distance.

Painting on the front window of Howard’s Rexall store and pharmacy Friday afternoon, she and nearly 150 other Farmington-area kids focused on painting Halloween scenes all along Main Street.

It’s a fall tradition that, like the Chester Greenwood Day parade, has gone on for ages. “Yup, I think I had my sisters helping me (paint),” James Fuerstenberger, 42, recalled. He looked at his daughter’s work – a bare-branched tree, a jack-o’-lantern, a huge yellow moon, and some bats. “I actually think I painted a tree at one point,” he said.

“You copycat,” Eve interjected, smiling. Then she squinted back at the window, and went back to work.

Whether local businesses let the town’s children decorate their windows is up to them, Rotary Club member and drawing contest organizer Kathy Muller said Friday. “We go around and get permission,” she said. “Some say no. The majority of them say yes.”

Each age group – from kindergarten up through sixth grade – is awarded five monetary prizes, Muller said. The money is donated by the Rotary, while the art supplies are given by the Downtown Business and Professional Association.

“It has been going on for quite a long time,” Muller said. “The Knights of Columbus used to run it, prior to Rotary taking it over.”

Across the street from where Fuerstenberger stood painting, Miriam Cohen, 8, put the finishing touches on her jack-o’-lantern, which was surrounded by brilliantly-colored dots of paint, a ghost and a bat.

“I like being outside,” she said, barely breaking concentration. “And it’s fun to see all my classmates doing this, and it’s really just fun to be outside.”

Mom Victoria piped up from the background. “Miriam said to me she’s ‘having a whale of a time,'” she chuckled.

Across the street, as the afternoon stretched on, Fuerstenberger painted a bit more. Last year, they were the last ones there, her dad said. “I like painting,” she said. She wants to be an artist.

Fuerstenberger won second place last year, she said. “This year, I’m going for the gold.”