If you don’t know already, I love parades. Love them. There is something so earnest and pure about parades. I mean, it takes a lot of work to put together a parade, and I’m not really sure what they’re supposed to be for, other than a general sort of community feel-gooded-ness. At least that’s the idea in our small town. Mom was also a huge fan of parades, so I think a lot of my fondness is also tied up in that.
So, on Sunday when Matthew heard the drums drumming, he yelled out to me from the other room, “Quick! There’s a parade!” We are lucky to live 100 feet from the parade route, so we don’t even need to plan ahead.
So I grabbed up the kids and we headed out.
It turns out, it wasn’t a parade after all. It was just parade practice.
I had forgotten – parades usually only happen on Saturdays. Sundays are practice days for the community marching band. We caught up with them in front of Paul’s Shoe Store and across from the town clock. This is where the grandstand is and where certain band-related trickiness happens, like stopping and starting and turning to salute the important folk in the grandstand. Drum major/clerk of court Mark Mumford put the band through the paces:
while the cheerful majorettes smiled for the camera.
Kato did not enjoy the hubub:
but August hoped he might be next in line for the drum major job:
What I like about Chestertown is that in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, as the marching band retreated down High Street (the main street in town):
this is what it looked like in the other direction:
And while the band was practicing 3/4 turns in front of the imaginary grandstand for 15 minutes, a few cars pulled up behind the band and waited patiently for them to be done. And, after a while, when nobody moved (because they were practicing 3/4 turns under the eagle eye of their fearless leader), the cars just slowly crept by on the far side of the street.
I’m pretty sure this doesn’t happen during practice for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
As the band marched down High Street toward the water, the kids tried to keep pace.
Unfortunately, Alden and Kato had to wait for me and August, the deadweights, to cross the street. This set them back enough that we were way behind when the band turned the corner onto Water Street.
Luckily, they ran into Doug the Baker and Michael Baker (for some reason Michael doesn’t get a “the,” though he is as much of a “the Baker” as Doug is) who were happy to keep them company on the corner, waiting for the band to return.
Eventually the band turned around and marched back on by:
past the old Custom House and on up Water Street. The other thing I love about Chestertown is that even our disaffected skateboarding youth can get into following the parade around town:
Once the practice parade had completely passed us by, Alden and Kato both stood up indignantly. “There wasn’t any candy at this parade!” I guess not everyone goes to a parade to enjoy the down-home wholesomeness of community morale-building. Luckily, sun buns, apparently, are a fair alternative, so Doug the Baker opened up the bakery and treated us each to a sun bun.
Now THAT’S what I call down-home wholesome community morale-building.
