As a seemingly never-ending line of costumed children, their hands clutched around tote bags decorated with pictures of black cats and jack-o-lanterns, marched slowly around the Columbus Soccer Complex Sunday during Mt. Vernon’s annual Trunk or Treat, they each got at least a few pieces of candy from Jurassic Park.
The “park’s” gates of painted cardboard boxes arced nearly twice the height of Roxanne Snider, who took a step back from handing out candy beside the trunk of her vehicle, complete with bushy plants and plastic dinosaurs. On the other side of the truck, her husband, Billy, and 8-year-old son, Brody, stood tall in inflatable T-Rex costumes waving to trick-or-treaters and their parents — at least when Brody himself wasn’t making the rounds to other brightly-decorated vehicles, some of which featured different carnival games — to complete his own collection of Halloween candy. The Sniders’ was one of dozens of decorated trunks parked around the soccer complex, with themes inspired by everything from game shows to pirates.
Roxanne, her friend Ruth Edmiston and their families collaborated on the Jurassic Park theme, but Edmiston credited the idea to Roxanne.
“We had seen the little blow-up costumes, so I started looking around on Pinterest,” Roxanne said.
Roxanne is a lifelong Columbus resident who works at an area doctor’s office and attends Mt. Vernon, where she and her family help with community service events — most recently a laundry day — but when it comes to community events, she said she always tries to have a trunk at the downtown trunk-or-treating event, usually inspired by popular culture.
“We’ve had a trunk the last couple of years,” she said. “We had a (Teenage Mutant) Ninja Turtle one and an Alabama football one.”
Most recently, she said, she and Edmiston teamed up last year for a Cookie Monster-themed trunk that was Edmiston’s idea, and it worked out well enough that they decided to volunteer together again this year.
It was a couple of hours of set-up to paint the cardboard boxes that made up the Sniders’ gate, stack them up and set up the sign welcoming trunk-or-treaters and their parents to Jurassic Park, she said.
In between adjusting dinosaur costumes and helping pick up candy for children who spilled their buckets and totes in the crowd, Roxanne reflected on her appreciation for the Halloween season and for the colorful and creative array of costumes the children around her were wearing. Her favorite, she said, was a pink and sea-green mermaid costume of a small girl collecting candy at the trunk across from hers — another reference to pop culture.
“‘The Little Mermaid’ was my favorite growing up,” she said with a smile.
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