Joe Phalon, Contributing Writer

Making and receiving calls used to be a relatively simple affair. The hardest it got was remembering to dial an area code if necessary. Which, by the way, wasn’t done lightly. One wrong digit of the area code and your call to Scranton was routed to Scottsdale. When a child picked up a phone and started playing with it, they might as well have picked up a loaded weapon for all the panic that ensued.

They had blood on their hands. And also on their machetes, meat cleavers, hockey masks and assorted body parts. Hundreds of people marked the first relatively normal Friday the 13th since the pandemic in Blairstown. That is, if people strolling up and down Main Street dressed to kill could be described as “relatively normal.” But this day of triskaidekaphobia was business as usual for the streets of Blairstown.