Every year in late July on a Thursday Marshall gets a little crazy.

The city hosts an annual Crazy Days celebration, a day filled with bargains at local businesses. It begins bright and early at 7 a.m. and continues until late afternoon.

We had a good Crazy Days this year. The weather was perfect. It wasn’t raining. It wasn’t too hot. It was perfect for getting people out for shopping.

Crazy Days warms my heart. It’s a day that gives business owners a connection with many shoppers. They’re right in the middle of the action.

The owners talk to customers. They ring up purchases and straighten merchandise. It leads to a personal connection associated with retailing.

That connection has been disappearing for more than a generation. The owners of big box stores are in distant cities. They make business decisions from office suites and boardrooms. They rarely if ever meet the staff at their individual stores.

I see a steady stream of cars going to the box stores on East Main. It makes me wonder. By choosing the box stores they limit my choices of places to shop. Many small businesses have closed in recent years.

I wonder if 21st century consumers even care about that. Crazy Days gives me hope that they care. Maybe they do want the personal connection and the service that goes with having a small family-owned operation.

People with longstanding connections to Marshall often say that Crazy Days isn’t what it was in the past. That’s true. It’s changed, A lot of things have changed over the years.

The important thing is that it still exists. It remains a special occasion for anyone who likes to shop. It gets people up early in the morning to check out the potential bargains.

Marshall’s Crazy Days tradition is reflected in the yearly Kiddie Parade. I worked as one of the coordinators of the parade in my summer job with the city parks and recreation department in the late 1980s. Families and day care centers got very creative with our costume contests. We had fun.

It’s great that the city has added new features to more recent Crazy Days events. Late afternoon highlights include a petting zoo and live entertainment.

The afternoon activities make Crazy Days more of a celebration. They encourage people to spend time in the downtown area. It’s a place to relax and enjoy instead of just a place to shop, get in the car and go home.

Crazy Days is a special day with the street blocked off. It’s like an open outdoor market that you find in foreign countries.

It’s a one of a kind shopping experience, a day when there are plenty of outdoor and indoor opportunities to buy things we need or want.

I hope Crazy Days always continues, that it doesn’t join a long list of activities that eventually fade away.

The list includes our Penny Carnival that took place each summer at Liberty Park. We’d set up carnival games at stations throughout the park area. For pennies kids could play the games and win prizes.

Other things can change with the times. Crazy Days has done that. I think it’s important that the city looks for ways to be innovative with Crazy Days in the years to come.

It would be a good thing to promote it even more than it’s promoted now. Some messages on electronic billboards would be helpful.

It wouldn’t be a free advertisement for any particular business. Instead it would just be a reminder to attend Crazy Days in Marshall.

We benefit from having activities that bring people to town. It’s also important that people who work in Marshall spend money here when they aren’t on the job. An event like Crazy Days serves as an incentive to do that.

We’re a growing college town and regional center. One of the nicest things about Marshall is that we haven’t lost the small town character that made us a great place to live in the 20th century. It’s a tradition we should always try to sustain.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent