By DEB GRUVER

Staff writer

Before-prom picture-taking is a storied tradition across the country, and in Peabody, it largely takes place on Walnut St.

In fact, it all but shuts down the town’s 1880s street.

Tanner Parks and Claira McElroy took photos staged by Tanner’s mother, Stacey Parks, up and down Walnut.

Tall, lean, and 100% country, Tanner wore jeans, a blue jacket with patterns, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. McElroy wore a long, sparkly gown with cutouts and a long slit for one leg, a popular style for proms.

Stacey Parks posed them on the limestone steps of the old Pop’s Diner building, in the street, and in the town’s downtown park.

Snap, snap, snap.

Soon, senior Abriauna Fisher-Soukup, wearing a long red dress, arrived with her date, Patrick Rust, a Goessel senior. He wore jeans, a black western vest, and a black cowboy hat.

He looked as if he’d just come from the set of “Yellowstone.”

The two couples took photos together in the park, waiting for other friends.

Then, Hailey Hamm and Weston Jones arrived in a semitrailer truck. Jones honked twice to signal that he and his date had arrived.

Eventually, he parked the truck at an angle in the street, and another couple going to prom in a silver truck did the same next to the semi.

“Wardrobe malfunction!” someone shouted.

It wasn’t clear what had happened. Best guess is it involved a gown.

A few minutes later, Tanner’s boutonniere fell off and tumbled onto the street.

He almost stepped on it.

“Tanner!” Stacey Parks shouted.

“Mom, do you have another one of those pins?” he asked.

Of course she did.

The school’s 5:30 p.m. promenade was getting close, so couples soon began to depart for Peabody-Burns Middle/High School.

The theme was “Northern Lights.” Paraprofessional Deanna Baker whispered outside, “You need to come inside and see the bigfoot.”

Prom sponsors had borrowed it from TC’s What Not Shop in Marion and hid it between two trees. By Monday, it was back up on the front of TC’s building.