Halloween was approaching and everywhere you looked there were ghosts and witches on the streets of Auburn.

 The spooky creatures were in paintings on the storefront windows and they were the work of many school children who had entered an annual competition sponsored by the Auburn Exchange Club. I remember participating in the holiday event in at least two years around 1951 and 1952.

 My entry was on Gee and Bee Sporting Goods. That’s when the store was located on Court Street where the recent addition to Auburn Hall has been built. The scene I painted has faded from memory, but I seem to recall that it involved headstones in a moonlit graveyard.

 It was a Saturday about a week before Halloween and the young painters were busy all along the sidewalks of Court and Main Streets. Some of the paintings also were being done on stores a bit outside the downtown hub.

 I was probably in the fifth or sixth grade and my principal memory of both years is trying to work with painfully cold hands. Powdered paints were supplied to the young artists at the site. Maybe the Exchange Club or the Auburn Parks and Recreation Department distributed the paint, but every painter had to mix the colors, and it took some experimentation before the right formulation was reached and the business of art could get under way.

 I don’t know if every store owner gave something to the artists assigned to their windows, but I was delighted to receive a football from Gee and Bee when I had finished.

 Ron Spofford was another painter who recalls those events. He is a few years younger than me and he also took part in the event two years in a row. He became my brother-in-law some 10 or 12 years later, but we went to different elementary schools and didn’t know each other at the time.

 My wife Judy remembers helping Ron mix his paints, and both of them also have vivid memories of the cold.

 “I don’t remember what my first scene was,” Ron said, “but I was better prepared the second year.” He said he painted on a window of the Wilson Dollar Store on Court Street, not far from Gee and Bee Sporting Goods, but we can’t figure out if we both painted in the same year.

 He painted a night scene with a fence, a big moon and a witch riding a broom.

 Ron said he was particularly impressed by a painting done by Marcia Harris on the Auburn Savings Bank window at Court and Main streets. He said she used a grid system on the large window to do a picture of Abraham Lincoln. The bank gave her $5, Ron recalled.

 Another of the painters Ron remembers is Philip Brooks, who regularly submitted drawings that were published in the Portland Sunday Telegram. Ron said Brooks carried his talents through to Edward Little High School where he was named best artist in his Class of 1961.

 The Auburn Exchange Club capped off its Halloween Week events with a costume parade at Walton Field in New Auburn. At least one of the Portland television stations covered the big Halloween party, and Ron said he was excited to be told he was seen on TV among the kids in that costumed crowd.

 “At that age, we thought only celebrities could get on TV,” he said.

 The Walton Field observance was attended by about 1,500 kids and 1,000 adults, the Lewiston Daily Sun reported on Oct. 31, 1952. The ELHS band performed, and there was a witch’s house in the end zone of the football field. The event also included free hot dogs and an assortment of game booths.

 Winners for window paintings were announced in four categories: senior, junior, elementary and midget, with prizes of $5, $3 and $2.

 Among the businesses listed by the newspaper for window paintings were Twaddle-Mitchell Oil Co., Advance Auto Sales, Plummer’s Market, First National Store, R.I. Mitchell, Ken’s Amoco Station, Dubar’s Market, Herrick Co., Cobb-Watson, Auburn Fruit and Twin City Tire Co.

 Lewiston also had a window painting competition sponsored by the Rotary Club. About 240 youngsters participated and there was a costume parade at Lewiston High School (before it became Lewiston Middle School on Central Avenue).