THE WEEKEND AHEAD · AMITYVILLE

A ragamuffin parade is a genuinely old Long Island habit: children in costume, walking down the main street, two or three weeks before Halloween, for no reason other than that the costume exists and the street is right there.

Amityville’s runs Saturday.

The Thomas H. Smith Ragamuffin Parade, hosted by the Amityville PBA, steps off at 10 a.m. on Saturday, October 17 from the 9/11 Memorial Park at 259 Broadway, by the LIRR station. The route runs down Broadway to Park Avenue and finishes at Village Hall, 21 Ireland Place. It is scheduled to wrap by noon.

Two things make this one worth putting on the calendar rather than catching by accident.

The first is the start point. A children’s costume parade that forms up at a 9/11 memorial is a very particular kind of village gesture — the two things sitting in the same place on the same morning, with nobody making a speech about it.

The second is who runs it. A police benevolent association putting on a costume parade for small children is the shortest possible route to a kid meeting an officer on a good day, in a costume, with a parent holding their hand. Whatever else is true about that relationship nationally, that particular Saturday morning version of it is worth an hour.

What we do not know yet, and are asking: whether there is a costume contest, whether anyone needs to register, what time the line-up actually starts before the 10 a.m. step-off, and what happens if it rains. We have put the questions to the Village and the PBA. The weather at least looks cooperative — Friday is the wet day, and Saturday comes in sunny with a high near 55 and a brisk northwest wind. Dress the costume over a sweatshirt.

And we would like to know who Thomas H. Smith was. A parade carries a name for a reason, and this one has carried his long enough that most people walking it have stopped asking. If you know, write to us — that is next week’s piece.

Sources: Village of Amityville calendar · I Love Babylon events calendar