Summerside Santa Claus parade

It is all pretty amazing. I went to visit Mary last afternoon and she mentioned the parade last night. A frigid Monday night on this snow-bound island and there was a parade planned. I recalled from previous November's vaguely a parade involving Christmas. I had never really participated or really cared, as the holidays are not in recent years that joyful. Perhaps since my fathers death that cold winter day after New Years in 1972 is the time it became so much less a joy for us all.

But here we drove up to the mall and parked near the post office. The street was clogged with all the town, bundled children and the old too. Well below zero and it being an impromptu decision to see this quaint site, we shivered as Mary with childlike twittering and glee watched the parade. My Air Force cadets were in front, followed by our tiny local news rag the Pioneer-Journal. The hugely rotund cheery be mustached mayor went by, not unlike the mayor in the munchkin land of the" Wizard of Oz". The famous tale of greed and evil written by my Great-Grandfathers (David Chamber's) best friend, Frank Baum.

To my amazement even a septic tank suck truck was in the parade. Only here or somewhere deep within the spine of Appalachia. Our local radio station's float blared Christmas music and the children in the parade threw candy at the crowd. I even caught a pack of peanut M and M's. That was the first time I seen such a thing.

Long ago I journeyed as a teenager with a hunting buddy into Northcentral Pennsylvania. It was a cold November day there, above the place where the mapmakers place the compass. A sparsely populated land of mountains and moonshine, deer and pain. There coming into the dying railroad junction called Renovo, we observed a crowd playing baseball in the icy streets. It was 2 AM on a Tuesday night before deer season and we were scouting a campsite. Baseball at 2 AM in the snowy mountains of a dead town. I had never seen such a thing.

We followed actually "in" the parade down Granville Street. Huge snow piles made grandstands for most of the town on this cold dark winter night. Only here. Only in the quaintness of this and what is this place, at the surface. Above the poverty and howling winds and ice. But such weather and life, the sea, the snow, binds a people. It is a maritime camaraderie. It is unique in its cold and its pain, its warmth. My Mary childlike as we parked at the parades end, the Waterfront Mall close to my soon x-home, off Water Street. The huge potato ship the "Tasman Start", in port still as the harbour is now solid ice. There cookies and Cocoa are served free with colorful marshmallows and a live singer of Christmas tunes maritime interpreted with an acoustic guitar. The ship will plow out of the ice away with island potatoes bound for some near or far place. As I shall plow and pull away back to another time and a whole new world. Old in its memories, new in its loneliness.


Mary's fat cousin said nothing as she piled on the sweets. Mary, proud of her height, strength and by island standards, lithe form , scowled in disapproval.

I amazed my lady and the entire town by dancing with Mary on the mall floor to "Silent Night". She was amazed and the rather rag-tag bundled crowd looked on. I wanted Mary to have a special memory-I am not sure when I shall return to this place. My De facto "hometown".

I shall point the old red truck south in less than a week. My 52nd birthday is today. I talked to my son and we made plans. The valley of the Yellow Breeches beckons. To leave behind the pain, love, anger and the cold, wind blown Northumberland Strait. The forever winter, the snow.