Friday, July 3, temperature in the 90’s, In our 56 years living and working in this Valley, I never saw so many cars parked by every public access to the Mad River. I’d also never seen so many people shopping at Mehurons. The Valley was packed. Having attended or participated in The Warren Parade almost all the years of living here, we knew we needed to get an early start and we did. We left South Duxbury at 7:33 a.m., arriving around 7:53 a.m. near the village. Still a good walk with all our gear. Already there were chairs and beach towels “staking claims’ to spots along the parade route. I brought sandwiches for, a number of snacks with extra to share, crochet projects, and a drop spindle and prepared fiber to spin. People and costume-watching took precedence, and no progress was made on projects, none! That is almost unheard of for me.
Family members and a friend were going to join us, but were seriously delayed. Space for them; saved. I’d never seen the numbers of spectators that kept streaming onto the parade route. The weather couldn’t be matched, and we were lucky to ‘set up’ such that a big, tall Maple tree’s shade protected us from the sun. Expected family didn’t come, didn’t come, didn’t come; two hours passed. People-watching switched to worrying-about-where-was-family?
Ten to twenty minutes before the start time, clouds covered overhead. My sidewalk neighbor to my left said “It never rains on a parade!” My sidewalk neighbor to my right shrugged her shoulders, responding to my quizzical look. The rain started, and we thought, surely the storm clouds would pass through. It became a steady rain and then a downpour. “Would the parade be cancelled?” “Would people leave to make the extremely long trek to their cars that were miles away?” No one moved. I kept thinking “Why won’t the floats come faster, certainly it will benefit the parade participants as well as the bystanders!” We were all absolutely drenched, already. One by one, slowly proceeding, they did. The Grand Marshals, The Valley Reporter, Sugarbush, the adult and children’s library, book carts rumbling in their synchronous street dance. The very old and newer fire trucks, The Prickly Mountain crew with The Lincoln Memorial and The Reflecting Pool of The Washington Monument. My neighbor said that Bernie was in the parade at the beginning, but I didn’t spy him. Our dear, old stalwart! How could we parade without him?
My husband and I, and all our gear, were more drenched than we had ever been in our lives! For most storms, there is a tree to go under, a car to duck inside of, a house to find protection in, but here, on the parade route, there was no place for the thousands to escape. What was very touching to me, was to see that the bystanders, all ages from new-born babies to the very elderly, the injured, the disabled, who had great difficulty getting there, virtually all stayed to see the parade and continued to stay to see the parade, no matter how hard it rained. The crowd cheered louder than ever before and they cheered longer than ever before and they clapped hard as the water splashed off their hands. A kind young girl in front of me handed me a candy she picked from one thrown onto the street, so I wouldn’t fall in the stream in front of me. She also gave me a tiny flag, that had been passed to her, just to be kind. A woman to my left offered me a hand to try to jump over the brook in the street. I took her hand and thanked her and squeezed her hands in thanks. I gave up all my “saved” spaces to whoever needed or wanted them in the pouring rain. Once in our car, a stranger knocked on the car window to ask if we could ride him to his car. His father was having something like a heart attack and he needed to get to his car. Of course, we drove him immediately. He kept thanking us over and over again. “No problem at all!” we said.
Driving home, we came to South Duxbury and the sun was shining and not a drop of rain was on any of the roads. At home we stripped and hung all our dripping wet clothes on our outdoor clothesline.
It was a very nice and memorable Warren 4th!
Collins lives in Duxbury.
