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Delivery Day

I just finished my paper route (yup, 30 years old and I’ve got a paper route) delivering the latest issue of the Pulse. I got an early start, avoided any serious traffic delays, and came back through Egg Harbor just in time to see a bunch of village business owners scrambling to get decorations and scarecrows out in front their stores.

October is a dizzying stretch if you own a business up here, especially one that requires a sizable staff. You spend the weekdays begging and bribing college kids to come back to work, if only for a shift. You want to keep inventory to a minimum, but you’re hoping for a crazy busy weekend so you can cover another couple weeks worth of costs in the winter. And you’re tired. You worked extra shifts in September when your staff left, because you can’t hire someone for just five weeks (and you need to save some money).

So here you are, with two, hopefully three great weekends to come, and you want to spruce up your storefront, but you have no time. So here’s an idea to simplify the process.

Why not have each town pick a weekday in middle or late September to decorate for the fall season? Work with some local farmers or farm markets and have them drive through town selling straw bales, pumpkins, and corn stalks right off the wagon, and get the whole town decked out in one shot, in plenty of time to look festive for the whole month.

It would save business owners time and entice more to folks to get behind the festival effort, and should make the local growers a little more money. If it worked, it could be used as a model for other holidays – Christmas, Blossom Festival, Independence Day.

Making it a little more convenient for overworked entrepreneurs might help us put a little more festive in our festival seasons.