By Jason Fields

The kids painting shop windows for Halloween on West 235th Street and Oxford Avenue had a little run in with an angry store manager and the police Sunday afternoon.

The manager of the Rite Aid ran out of his store and told a mother to gather her children, clean up his window and take off.

Apparently his boss forgot to give him the word that the drugstore was a paid participant in the 53rd annual Kiwanis Club of Riverdale Halloween windowpainting contest.

In fact, the manager was mad enough to attract the attention of passing police officers from the 50th Precinct. They told him to calm down, Kiwanis emissaries showed up to explain what was going on, and the manager swiveled around and stormed back into his store.

After the confrontation, the kid’s painting still gleamed garishly in the sun.

Grandparents, parents and children were gathered on a beautiful, sundrenched late-October to participate in a Riverdale tradition.

The little ones — and medium-sized ones — held paintbrushes in their hands, with lips pursed and fierce concentration in their eyes. Ghosts, witches and pumpkins were slowly taking shape under their careful ministrations on windows that enclosed banks, restaurants and drugstores. If it weren’t for the smiles and bright sunlight, it could have, just possibly, been creepy.

“It’s a happy witch,” Kristin Sheehan, 10, said. Despite the stereotypical black, pointed hat and black gown, the head of Kristin’s witch would have done any 1970s smiley-face button proud.

Kristin and three other friends from St. Gabriel’s school were working on the windows of the Blue Bay Diner, an institution of counters and booths that’s been a fixture forever.

Batu Petru, standing a little farther south on the block, has owned restaurants on Johnson Avenue for 27 years, first one called The Place, and now Café Blue. He has participated in the event every year he’s been on the block. One year, the kid painting his window was the winner of the event.

“I remember one girl, 15 years ago,” Mr. Petru said. “I’m Romanian, so she drew Dracula. … Nice kids.”