 
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 350
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - 6:56 pm: |    |
The Last Parade,,,,,,or Hurrah?
This will be the last ‘rerun.’
I had never finished this story. It needed a Christmas Holiday addendum.
The Parade is faltering, thinning out, if you will. Attrition has diminished the number of participants. Like an old automobile tire, time has worn down our tread to a bald spot that can blow out at any time.
For us, the Parade began in the summer of 1935. I was seven years old. My family and I, along with all of our neighbors had front and center seats for the Parade. More often than not, we became part of the Parade, trading our seats for the thrill of just being in the Parade.
McClellan Avenue was the main artery of the Parade. There was no starting point. It had no single origin and it had a thousand, trickling, exit terminals.
It was a 24/7/52 event, in the short hand vernacular of today.
There were a few consistent performers doing their acts every day. However, the majority of performers were of a more spontaneous ilk. Those performers and their acts would vary. They were predictable, but only up to a point.
Because I was so young, I was not privy to the more intriguing things that might have been going on in the wee small hours of the morning.
My first remembrance of the Parade was the strange cacophony that awakened me that first morning. It was a slow drum beat of sorts but it was a very unusual sound. I looked out the window and was amazed to see a horse, pulling a wagon, creating that rhythmic, clip clop!
As I watched, the horse would stop and the driver stepped out of the wagon carrying a metal rack full of bottles of milk. His choreography never changed. He would hustle to the back of a house and then another and still another. The horse would move, ever so slowly from one house to the next until the milkman, now carrying an empty rack, returned to the wagon. Their performance and timing were impeccable.
A more reverent act followed the milkman. A group of ladies, most of them dressed in black, with heads slightly bowed while fingering their rosary beads, trudged wearily but devotedly
down the street to Nativity Church to pray for the souls of their dearly departed. They had to share the sidewalk at times with the less devout Free Press newsboy as he delivered his wares.
In those depression racked middle years of the thirties, a constant survey was underway by grade school boys, teenagers, young men and old men alike, as they cast their glance’s on the gutters of the street, looking for cigarette butts that might have two or three puffs of nicotine energy left in them.
By seven o’clock in the morning a few fortunate denizens were hustling their way to their jobs that were so precious to have and trying to arrive early to show the boss how much they appreciated having those jobs.
The tempo of the parade would increase when the Catholic children began their reluctant march to morning mass and then, to school. Some of them were carrying their breakfast in a brown paper bag. They intended to receive Holy Communion during Mass and thus enjoy the privilege of having an extra ten minutes or so to consume their meal while the rest of the class was involved in academic pursuits.
The iceman cometh with his wares after the children and employed parents had exited the Parade route. He was the first costumed performer and arguably, one of the best. His blue denim garb was enhanced with a leather belt that supported a tool pouch on the right side of his waist and a steel hook on the other. A heavy leather saddle adorned his left shoulder.
His choreography was consistent. He used his iron tongs like a lasso, hauling a 100 pound chunk of ice from the front of the truck bed and dragging it to the rear and then dissecting it with his large ice pick. He had read the customers order for 50 pounds as per the cardboard order form that was always placed in the front window of his home. The card could be rotated in 90 degree increments to order 25, 50, 75 or 100 pounds.
Stooping, in one swift move, he threw the open jaw of the tongs at the obliging 50 pound chunk and slid it off the truck onto his padded left shoulder. As he made his delivery, the adolescent scavengers would raid the truck for any maverick ice shards or chips.
When the iceman returned with his tongs dangling from the hook on his left side, he would pull out the large ice pick from his pouch and menace the children. They would just laugh and follow him down the road. He was the Pied Piper of McClellan Ave.
In the middle of the morning more personal performers made their furtive way up or down the street. The Scarlet Lady looked to be about 30 years old or so. She was slim with an extremely small, but still noticeable mound protruding from her stomach. Yes, she was pregnant but not married. The insidious whispers seemed magnified. There she is. Yes, she is. I wonder who is,,,,?
Then there came the obvious truant. Old enough to be in school, too young to be out of school, trying to look blase and above it all.
Then came the old trouper, a polished performer. That would be Mr. S. toddling and tippling his way down to Chuck’s Bar on the southwest corner of McClellan and E. Warren. This was just his first entrance. In a half hour or so, his determined wife, dressed in black, wielding an umbrella that will never open, will corner him in the bar and persuade Mr. S. to return home with a few whacks of her umbrella. However, just like the mysterious birthday cake candle that would keep re-igniting, Mr. S. would be hustling his way back to the bar an hour or so later. And so would she.
The Addendum.
The Parade’s musical accompaniment was supplied by the roar of the DSR buses on E. Warren, staunchly supported by any number of worn out automobile mufflers. (No stainless steel exhaust systems in those days.) Vocal arrangements were delivered by the neighborhood dogs, screaming babies, and mothers and fathers screeching at one another for a million and one different reasons.
Saturday was always a good day for the Parade. Shoppers heading for the Eastern Market were up and gone quite early in the morning. Their return was always noticed. Home made “carry all” bags, made of denim, was the absolute ‘accessory’ du jour for shopping at the market. The racket made by the ‘live’ chickens, being carried in those bags, would soon cease when the chickens lost their heads.
Bedlam was normal on Saturday with what would appear to be, ten children to each square foot of pavement, all screaming at the top of their lungs,,,,,in ordinary conversation. I never, never, recalled a mother sticking her head out of the door and screaming for the children to SHUT UP! (Inside of a house, a child better not scream, about anything!)
Now, fast forward to December 10th or so. With luck, there would be a little snow on the ground. This would soften or absorb much of the noise. The clip clop of the horses, the infernal ‘clicking’ of one’s heel plates on the sidewalks, and the silence of the wind as it tried to push through the snow covered branches of the trees.
If the streets and sidewalks were paved with a thin layer of ice, more exciting acts would take front and center stage. Pedestrians, by the dozens, taking ‘pratfalls and each one was different from the other one. The Cirque du Soleil may have been there, taking notes.
Easily, on an icy day, there was one and only one, spectator sport. That being, sitting near the corner (but not too close) of McClellan and E. Warren, betting on the next “fender bender” that would inevitably take place at any time. The curtain was raised at ‘rush’ hour time. Four in one hour was the record .
Church activities were booked full, day and night. A lot of Bingo and pot luck dinners were going on. The Church basement was the Venue. Kids, like me, loved Bingo night. Mothers took their children and then turned them loose in the playground, in the dark of night. No one got raped, killed or stolen. No one ever thought about it.
There was a cumulative anticipation in us children as Christmas Day drew near. Not solely because of the prospect of Christmas Gifts (there were never that many) but the reverence and spirituality of the season permeated our thoughts.
The best presents we could hope for would be one big one that might cost between five and ten dollars, a smaller one that might cost two dollars and at about four to six other presents like stockings, underwear, mittens, a sweat shirt and maybe a nice shirt.
My Uncle Vivian worked for the Firestone Company in Akron, Ohio. He would visit us at Christmas time. He gave each of us children an envelope. One of those money envelopes with a card that had a cut-out in the middle, showing the picture of George Washington. A ONE DOLLAR BILL!!!!! It always took my breath away.
That PARADE is sadly missed. Simply because of the humanity of it.
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Kathinozarks
Member
Username: Kathinozarks
Post Number: 1754
Registered: 11-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - 8:44 pm: | |
This one ROCKS! I don't share your ability with words to describe what I'm feeling, but what you have made me feel is good. Thank you Tponetom. |
Ray1936
Member
Username: Ray1936
Post Number: 3726
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - 9:18 pm: | |
A Franklin would have looked better in that cut out envelope, but I don't suppose there were many of them around back in '37.
Nice essay, Tp. As usual. |
Barnesfoto
Member
Username: Barnesfoto
Post Number: 3542
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - 1:10 am: | |
As usual, Tpone's words fired up the projector in my mind, and played a scratchy and slightly faded but beautiful film.
There are those on the board who are good writers and there are folks on the board who are masterful writers, and we all know which column the Poet Laurate of McClellan Ave. marches in... |
Eriedearie
Member
Username: Eriedearie
Post Number: 4302
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, December 25, 2008 - 12:15 am: | |
Tp - another winner! You are such a treasure of a sweet and gracious man to share your wonderful memories with us.
Thank you for this Christmas present of a story! |
Lowell
Moderator
Username: Lowell
Post Number: 5125
Registered: 09-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 25, 2008 - 12:24 pm: | |
Wonderful Tponetom. I have often mused on how much air conditioning and other forms of climate control, along with home entertainment did so much quiet the streets and cocoon us from society and its former cacophony whether at home or on the road. |
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