Kids Have All the Fright Stuff at Street Parade

Santa Paula is not generally known for its spookiness, but then again it isn’t every day that hundreds of pint-size ghouls take to the street.

More than 600 costumed youngsters filed down Main Street during the annual Halloween Parade on Saturday, transforming the quiet, tree-lined thoroughfare into a freakish extravaganza of Halloween revelry.

“Boo!” said 7-year-old Paul Latore, a.k.a. Dracula, to his little brother David as they waited their chance to enter the parade route.

“You’re gross,” replied David, through his creepy skull mask.

Organized by the Santa Paula Optimist Club, the parade has been a fixture in this little town for about a decade.

In addition to the parade, which followed a quarter-mile route from Ebell Park to Veterans Park, the day featured a costume contest that brought out the best, or rather scariest, in some of Santa Paula’s youngest residents.

Amid the mob of costumed kids, there were plenty of witches with green complexions and hairy warts. Scores of skeletal zombies, one of them with a rubber snake jutting out of an eye socket, participated in the event, along with a smattering of Power Rangers and even one 4-foot-tall, yet very muscular, Superman.

“You can’t help but smile,” said 77-year-old Jess Echavarra, who came out to watch his four parading grandchildren. “It’s fun.”

James Juarez, who preferred to be called Captain on Saturday, won the cutest costume prize for his fighter pilot’s get-up.

In addition to sporting a leather aviator’s cap and goggles, the 6-year-old flying ace had a sleek silver plane, complete with propeller, Air Force insignia and even a tally of the number of scary creatures he had brought down in combat.