Celebrations

Gin

When I was in seventh grade in Pittsfield I was given a book titled Every Day is a Holiday.  The holidays described were unlike present day commemorations fabricated by various commercial organizations like “National Cupcake Day.” (You can celebrate that on October 18.) There were no holidays in my book designed to generate excuses to buy greeting cards like National Aunt and Uncle Day. (You can enjoy that day on July 26.)  My book was a compendium of celebrations, big and small, religious and secular, well-known and obscure, from countries all over the world.

Each holiday was described in a one-page essay.  I still have this book, one of the few things I have from my childhood.  It’s small, perhaps 5 by 8 inches, with a worn green cloth cover and a gold binding on which is printed the name of the book, the authors, and the publisher, Harper.  Written in my handwriting, in pencil, is a large 3 followed by a smaller 1 raised and to the right in the superscript position. Libraries may have had the Dewey Decimal System but I had my shelving system which determined the holiday book belonged on the third shelf of my bookcase, the first book in from the left.  I don’t recall on what basis I positioned my books, but I do like the idea there was some order to the way I kept them. Clearly I wanted them to be put back exactly where they had been.

I really enjoyed the whole concept of this book.  When I first got the book I’d compulsively read each day’s entry in the morning. It was part of the way I started my day.  I’d read a bit of it to my younger sister, sometimes paraphrasing the academic tone.   On weekends, I would sometimes cheat, looking ahead to family birthdays to see what other people would be celebrating that day. My sister’s birthday, January 3, fell on a festival honoring the  patron saint of Paris, Genevieve.  My birthday, March 30, was a celebration called The Silver Bell of Stuttgart. This was a story of romance and murder between a mother and daughter in love with the same man and a bell that mysteriously rang out year after year on March 30, the day the mother had suddenly disappeared. This plot line was far removed from my everyday life, more worthy of a tragic opera.

I took this book with me when I went away to college. In the early days of my relationship with Bill as college sophomores, I would regale him with the tale of that day’s holiday.  As is the case with a blossoming relationship, he kept to himself that he might not be particularly interested in this information.  I don’t know how many weeks it took me to realize he didn’t really want to know that February 23 had been celebrated in Rome as Terminalia, a day to honor the god Terminus by walking along the perimeter of your property while tossing garlands of flowers and offering up cakes of fruit and grain at various altars.  Or that March 3 was the Doll Festival in Japan. It was kind of fun though to share that March 5, his birthday, was also a day to celebrate the Festival of Flowers in Greece.

While the City of Pittsfield didn’t celebrate every holiday in the book, or any, it did honor most of the traditional American holidays with celebrations.  My favorite was the Fourth of July.  That meant the carnival would be in town. 

On the Fourth of July my family went to the carnival in the early evening in order to be there when the fireworks were shot off just after dark.  It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I found out the carnival actually opened on July 1.  July 4 was its final night. Fourth of July was a big deal in Pittsfield.  There was a parade in the morning, fireworks at night and a carnival in between.  Once we moved to Montgomery Avenue, with the carnival at nearby Waconah Park, it became an annual family event.

To me the carnival was all about the rides.  I never wasted money on any of the games of skill. I never wandered along the midway.  I came for the rides. This was a big deal to me.  It only happened once a year. There was a Ferris wheel, the swings, a tilt-a-whirl, and for the daring young men of Pittsfield, the rocket ride.  Amusement parks were few and far between, especially for families like mine that didn’t always have a car.  As a teen, I learned about Mountain Park in Holyoke and Riverside Park in Springfield, both large amusement parks, but as a child the only opportunity I had for such rides was on the Fourth of July at the local fair.  That made it special. I wonder if kids today who can spend any day they please at an amusement park still get as excited as I did.

My favorite ride was the swings.  Each rider had their own wooden seat with wooden slats for the back.  There was a safety chain in front. Each swing was suspended from the structure at the top.  As the swing rotated faster and faster, you would whiz around and around feet dangling free.   I always tried to get an outside swing which would swing wider as you went faster.  It was just so much fun.  Unlike the Ferris wheel, you couldn’t see anything.  The scenery was just a blur.  The sensation was contradictory, being loose and free with feet floating unconnected to anything while feeling very secure with your body pushed against the back of the swing seat.

The only ride my mother liked was the Ferris wheel. She didn’t like the spinning rides. They made her dizzy.  When you think about it, most carnival rides spin in circles. The Ferris wheel also made a circle but on the vertical with a gentle motion that she enjoyed. The two of us would wait in line for our turn and then slide into the still rocking seat.  We’d sit back and wait for the carnival worker to slam and secure the bar. I liked to lean against the bar in the front, but my mother always wanted me to sit so I was pressed against the seat. I loved being able to see out over the whole carnival as we  traveled higher and higher up around the wheel.   Sometimes I wished it wouldn’t go so fast. I wanted to spot people I knew below or recognize stores on the streets that bordered Waconah Park.

Usually my older brother disappeared to be with his friends once we got to the carnival. Occasionally he’d join me on the Ferris wheel.  He wasn't my mother.  He’d start to rock back and forth. “I'm going to make it tip over,” he’d say gleefully trying to get me scared.  But I’m thinking, if it tips over he’s going to get hurt too, so he wouldn’t do that. Still I was a bit nervous, so I just smiled.  Best was when the ride was nearly over.  If you were among the last to get off, you would get an entire revolution in slow motion. The wheel would stop to empty a seat of one set of riders and replace them with new ones then rotate just enough so the next seat was at the bottom. If you were in the right seat this whole process could last longer than the ride itself. I loved that.

One year my brother told us he wasn’t going to do the Ferris wheel. "I'm too old for that. I’m going to ride the Rocket." Sometimes we called this ride the dive bomber.  I was too scared to ride it.  It consisted of a tall metal pole with two rocket-shaped contraptions at each end, each fully enclosed. There was room for four in each car, two facing one way and two facing the other.  When the ride was operating the pole rotated with each rocket car also spinning around. Teenage boys would dare each other to get on the thing.  Every dare must have been accepted even if reluctantly because the ride was always full.

My mother and I are on the Ferris wheel enjoying the view of the carnival laid out underneath us.  Suddenly we were startled, then scared.  Looking over to the rocket ride we saw the pole was bent over.  Both sets of rocket cars were still attached but the one affixed to the bent part of the pole was hanging just above the ground.  The other car was still intact on its end of the pole. We were still on the Ferris wheel when we heard sirens and saw the crowd being pushed away so that firemen, police and ambulances could get close. We felt trapped remembering David’s words, “I’m going to ride the Rocket.”  

“What about David,” I yelled!  I was pretty upset.  My mother seemed calm, but probably wasn’t.  “Maybe he wasn’t on it,” she said.  She didn’t sound very convinced.  I realized she was worried too. Then our ride started again.  The fun was gone as we just wanted to get off and see what was happening.  We wanted to look for my brother.  When we finally did get off the ride, my father and brother were both there to meet us.  “I was in line when it happened,” my brother explained.  We all went over to watch the rescue.  A fire truck ladder was raised up to remove the scared occupants.   As it turned out, no one was badly hurt.  While the city likely initiated some kind of investigation regarding safety procedures, for some of the kids the possibility of such breakdowns only added to the excitement.  “Do you think your brother will go on the Rocket ride this year?” became a familiar refrain as the next year’s carnival approached.  From then on the Rocket ride became the daredevil ride. 

As it grew darker everyone began to anticipate the fireworks display.  We are somewhat jaded about fireworks as I write this in 2015.  Now we require fireworks be synchronized with music and fill the sky with multiple rockets for at least 30 minutes. The fireworks I experienced as a child often did last 30 minutes, but with long breaks in between, a one-at-a time deal, each rocket bursting into colored stars which faded as they fell to the ground.  Without computerized synching, there were full minutes of empty time between the rockets as the technicians slowly moved from one launch pipe to the next.  

It was only after we moved to Montgomery Avenue when I was 12 that we saw the fireworks from Waconah Park where they originated.  Without a car it was often too far from where we lived to walk to the launching site. Instead, my parents would determine a high point near to our house from which we could see the fireworks. This was fun because since they began after dark I was young enough to be excited to stay up past my usual bedtime to be outside at night. The four of us, my mother, father, David and me, would troop out carrying blankets, both for sitting and for warmth.  Fourth of July weather would vary a lot in Pittsfield, the evenings could be chilly even though it was summer.  We'd find a spot to spread out our blanket with a clear look into the sky to enjoy the show. We even got used to the pauses between rockets. The slow pace made the finale when a number of rockets were shot up at the same time even more fun.

Years later, when I was a teenager, I would go to the fireworks with a friend. We got up real close so they exploded just above us. That was when I discovered the ground fireworks.  I realized during the time we were waiting on that hill near our house for the next sky burst, people at the venue were watching these ground fireworks.  No wonder there was such a time lag. The ground displays, wooden frames with fireworks attached, were very different than the sky rockets. One would spin with white sparks flying all over the place. Another was a fiery sputtering American flag.  There was always a pair of ships meant to emulate the fight between British and American ships that inspired the Star Spangled Banner. Small rockets would pass between them until the British ship would fell over to the cheers of the crowd. 

Before the carnival and the fireworks, there was the parade. The tradition of a Fourth of July parade in Pittsfield started in 1824.  At that time the procession consisted of Revolutionary War veterans and politicians riding in horse-drawn carriages. The parade was held on and off until 1947 when the organization was taken over by the city’s firemen’s association. Actually, the entire Fourth of July celebration was managed by the local firefighters. It became known as the Firemen’s Muster.  

The parade had bands, floats, and the usual convertibles full of politicians. Fire companies from all over western Massachusetts who were participating in the muster that afternoon filled the streets with their trucks, equipment and rows and rows of firemen. I remember the sounds of shrieking sirens and blaring horns, the shouts of vendors selling cotton candy and the drums of the Pittsfield High Marching Band. Vendors walked along the packed sidewalks selling balloons, popcorn, and all kinds of souvenirs. Quite a festive atmosphere. 

When I was in eighth grade, my friend and I decided to see what this Firemen’s Muster was all about.  We followed the parade down to Waconah Park, not to go to the carnival, that was for night time, but for the muster. It took place in the afternoon just after the parade. The muster was a competition among the different fire companies racing against the clock to spotlight the skills of each company as they accomplished tasks required in a real fire situation. Some were outdated.  A long line of firemen filling up a tank using a bucket brigade. Others were more realistic.  Firemen climbing up and down a ladder, working with hoses, getting them off the truck, unfurling and connecting them to a water source.  Those with the best times were declared the winners.  Not only was it fun to watch but now I knew what a muster was. 

The competition seemed like something that had its roots in an earlier century but remained spirited and good natured. I was glad I saw it at least once.  My friend Carole, however, was bored thinking more of getting cotton candy than firemen running around carrying buckets of water. Within the next few years a drum and bugle corps competition replaced the muster.  Since each band in that competition also marched in the parade, their involvement made the parade more entertaining.  I liked it when they stopped near you to perform one of their maneuvers, rows of players interweaving, crisscrossing, ending up in their original marching formation just as the music ended. Now that I think of it, to most of us watching the parade, these drummers and buglers were more interesting than fire company after fire company pulling old fire wagons down North Street.

Fourth of July marked the beginning of the summer for me.  By the time the Fourth came, I was out of the going-to-school routine. The less-structured summer routine was starting.   While people in other communities might need to wait until fall with its harvest festivals,   summer in Pittsfield meant the Mardi Gras.  Pittsfield public parks and recreation had no problem co-opting this name and applying it to a uniquely Pittsfield event. 

In an earlier blog, Neighborhoods, I wrote about the joys of the Pittsfield parks program. Each local playground and there were many, close to twenty at the peak, had college students as counselors. While the parks were open all the time, the specific programs ran all day into the evening with breaks for lunch and supper.  Parents signed a card with the names of their participating children along with their own name, address and phone number just in case they needed to be contacted. That was it. You were registered.  Parents felt secure in those days. We were free to wander around, take part in the organized activities, or just play on the equipment.  We came and went as we pleased.

Each summer the highlight of the parks program was Mardi Gras.  This was an all day event followed by an evening parade down North Street.  During the day, groups of playground kids would be bussed to Springside Park, one of the larger parks.  Each playground was assigned a section of Springside which the counselors had decorated with certain colors to identify the group.  I think we also had badges on with our name and the name of our playground as an organizing device.  There were games, food, and competitions between the different playground kids. For example, the kickball game might be between my playground, Crane, and Allen Heights playground.  There were races, beanbag tosses, Simon Says. You would try to collect ribbons for your playground.  At the end of the day it would be announced which playground had won the most.

After a day of activity, we would be bussed back to our local playground, go home, pretend to eat supper before rushing back to prepare for the parade.  We had been hard at work over the past couple of weeks making a float. Each year there was a different theme, Mother Goose or Around the World. 

The second time I participated the theme was something like Wonders of a New England Year.  There must have been adults among us who had abilities or perhaps the college-aged counselors took the lead. I don’t recall being able to do much as a float maker but over the days, miraculously, a float took shape  Our playground chose to make a float that celebrated autumn.  We decorated with orange and brown crepe paper, made artificial corn stalks, borrowed large plastic pumpkins and built something from wire and rolls of colored paper that was supposed to be a cornucopia with fall vegetables spilling out of it. 

Best of all, I was invited to be one of the float riders.  I was extremely happy about this. I was a leaf.  My costume was made out of some sort of stiff brown material.  It was two-sided in the shape of a maple leaf almost as tall as I was.  There was room for my head to come out of the top and for my arms to extend out the sides. There were two other leaves, a pumpkin and a few apples riding on the float as well.  Our job was to wave to those watching the parade. 

I was part way through the parade when I sadly realized when you are in the parade, you can't see the parade!  All I saw was the gymnastics team walking in front of us and the car with some city politician that followed us.  No view of any of the other floats. No view of the equestrian team that sometimes stopped to do maneuvers.  No view of the bands, cheerleaders, or marchers from the high school.  Just the gymnastics group and the boring convertible with a family I didn’t know smiling and waving.  I felt a bit cheated.  Why didn’t someone tell me I would miss the parade by being in it!

I vowed never to be in another parade. I would just watch. Which is exactly what I did at Halloween.

Halloween in Pittsfield was a two-night celebration. The Pittsfield City Council would look at the calendar each fall and decree one night (usually October 30) as trick or treat night.  The real Halloween night (October 31) was reserved for the Pittsfield Halloween Parade. As a little kid, I loved the idea that the City Council voted on trick or treat night.  It made it official, somehow sanctioning you were allowed to wander the streets asking people for candy.

The neighborhoods I lived in were great for this kind of activity.   The multi-family homes meant you could hit two or four families with just one brief walk along the pathway to the house from the sidewalk.  Many of the folks who lived upstairs would come down and sit in their stairway with bowls of candy for us to choose from.  Every once in a while you would have to climb some stairs to get your treats. You could get to as many as a hundred families in just a few blocks.

We never purchased costumes.  Instead we made our own depending on what we found in our house. My older brother would usually dress as a “bum” or “hobo.”  This involved putting on some ill-fitting older jacket of my father’s and burning a cork over our stove to smudge patches of soot on his face. For me, it meant a trip to the attic where my mother had a box of older, not to be worn again, dresses.  I would find some long fancy skirt that had sequins or silver threads, add a lacy shawl and declare myself a fortune-teller.  It never occurred to me to wonder when my mother had worn these clothes new. They certainly seemed out of character in her present life.   

On trick or treat night the streets were busy. The official time to be out was six to eight. At eight o’clock. the porch lights went off. It was time to go home. Some adults walking with the little ones were also dressed up. Most houses had been decorated not with lights—that was really reserved for Christmas-- but with cutouts of witches, brooms, and pumpkins, bundles of straw, and an occasional torn sheet meant to suggest cobwebs.

As I got older I realized adults looked less kindly on teenagers roaming through the streets asking for candy.  If you were tall as I was, sometimes you’d be questioned. “How old are you? Where do you live?  Who are you?”  I loved the idea of dressing up, walking around in the dark and sharing in the excitement.  I didn’t want to give that up just because I was thirteen.  Lo and behold I found a solution.  Our church youth group leaders were exhorting us to trick or treat for UNICEF.  We signed up for our own neighborhoods using a pre-made cardboard box with a slot on top for donations.   

What a great plan.  I still was able to be dressed up and spend the night knocking on friendly lit doors.  My UNICEF box prevented any questioning looks. “Trick or Treat for UNICEF,” I’d say.  In response, they’d say, “Well, aren’t you nice for doing this.  Here, have some candy as well.”  Then at eight, when trick or treat was over, I walked to one of the local churches to turn in my box of donations.  When I got there, I saw there was a party for those of us who had volunteered.  Free donuts, cider, more candy, and a certificate for being selfless, working to help others.  It all seemed embarrassing to me.  I wasn’t particularly selfless. I had found a way to keep my Halloween tradition going along with gathering plenty of candy.

Usually the night after trick or treat was the Pittsfield Halloween parade, a still continuing event. This year, 2015, marks the 71^st edition. That is interesting.  It began in 1944.  Not really a parade at that point.  It was a community event, children and adults dressing in costume and marching around the Pittsfield Commons. Maybe the powers that be thought it would be a morale booster as the war dragged on. The next year must have been jubilant with VE Day in April and VJ Day in August. That year the paper reported 20,000 revelers watching two-thousand costumed marchers.

During the years after the war, the parade took a different shape, offering floats and bands in addition to the fancy costumes.  By the 1950’s, when I started looking forward to it, the main event of the parade was a float created by the workers at the G.E. Each year a different theme. Each year an impressive creation.  Pitt the Dragon returning to reclaim his field; a haunted house with spooky half-seen creatures moving through the windows; a flying saucer, its hatch open revealing a robot with flashing lights; a Halloween Jack in the Box that sprung open dramatically tossing out popcorn balls.  Even though October 31 was frequently cold in Massachusetts, going out to the parade was a spectacle not to be missed no matter the weather. And I knew enough not to participate in the Halloween parade.

As if Halloween wasn’t exciting enough, Christmas was even better. North Street decorated with sparkly lights, England Brothers devoting the entire fourth floor to Santa’s Land with aisles of toys, every house on the block adorned with lights, candles, wreaths, and Glass Wax stencils. Then there was the Christmas party organized by union workers at the G.E. for the kids of their members. 

The party was a big deal. It seemed to me that every kid in Pittsfield went, whether their parents worked at G.E. or not. It's a Saturday morning in early December.  Every movie theatre in Pittsfield is open. You can even sit in the balconies.  You never got to sit in the balconies during regular movies. The extra seats were necessary as every theatre was packed.  There are lines outside. I’d get there as early as I could hoping for that seat in the balcony. My father had given me a ticket showing me how to write my name on the back to qualify for a raffle. When you entered, the ticket was exchanged for a bag of candy and popcorn.

I didn’t mind waiting for the show to begin. There was so much commotion.  Kids running round, cheering, a crazy level of excitement. The Christmas party wasn’t just a free movie; there were live performances.  Magicians, tap dancers, accordion players, jugglers, all kids like me. Even though I didn’t think they were particularly good, I was impressed by their willingness to go out on the stage in front of everyone and perform.  I guess this was Pittsfield’s answer to Ed Sullivan.  Amazing to think there was that much “talent” in the city to supply variety acts for all six movie theaters at the same time!  I wonder how the acts were chosen or if anyone was ever turned away from performing.  While we were not a very discerning audience, we were pumped up with sugar and wanted to have a good time, so the performers were always met with enthusiasm and raucous applause.

After the last accordion player, the movies started.  First the cartoons.  I particularly liked Casper the Friendly Ghost. The idea of people starting out being scared by strange occurrences only to discover it was all in fun I found appealing. Another favorite was Mr. Magoo. Here was a near-sighted guy somehow avoiding disaster as he bungled through his day. I remember one in particular in which Magoo stumbles into a construction site.  At one point he is about to step off a beam when, through a series of well-timed events, he is saved when another beam swings by just as he is stepping off into space. Such things continued until he was finally back on the sidewalk completely unaware how close he had come to disaster. Magoo cartoons were a bit like an animated Rube Goldberg device.  Very clever I thought. 

There were also sing-a-long cartoons. A bouncing ball kept the crowd together by highlighting the words.  I imagine there were some of these that were Christmas carols, but what I recall were mostly old barbershop quartet songs like “Down by the Old Mill Stream” or “On a Bicycle Built for Two.” These songs weren’t part of our daily world, but like everything else that morning, we sang along with gusto.

The mainstream movie was something that had been out for a while. Nothing new. Something they could get cheap.  Maybe a pirate adventure or a western  Nothing too challenging.  Nothing really good.  Just for fun.  And free.

It still wasn’t over. After the movie they would hold a raffle with toys that had been donated by local stores.  On the way out we received a final gift.  A candy cane, a gift bag with a few small toys, coloring books, a small box of crayons, toy cars, marbles, rubber balls.

I don’t know when the G.E. Union Christmas parties started. It was always a part of my growing up. One year, when I was home from college, I took my younger sister to the event. I hadn’t been for a number of years. I swear the same acts were performing. Maybe they kept these teenage accordion players and tap dancers in suspended animation unfreezing them each year for this purpose.  My sister and I laughed and cheered along with the rest of the crowd throughout the whole show. 

During the raffle I heard them call out my name.  I looked at the stage.  The emcee was holding a huge stuffed tiger which I had won. He was staring at the crowd, repeating my name several times. There was no way I, a 17 year-old pretending to be a grownup, was going onto that stage in front of all the little kids and claim that stuffed animal.  I turned to my sister and gave her my ticket stub. “Go down there.” (Yes, we were in the balcony.) “Give them this ticket. Tell them your name is Ginny and take the stuffed tiger.” She looked at me horrified,  “I’ll get in trouble.”  I kept assuring her it would be okay. “I am going to give the tiger to you anyway.” She wouldn’t budge.  By this time the emcee had moved on to the next prize. What happened next is, well, unclear.   

Here is what I always thought happened. We waited until the show was over, the kids were piling out.  Then my sister and I walked to the stage where I had her hand over the ticket.  I was still too embarrassed to claim it even though the audience had left.  The emcee, glancing at the number, handed my sister the stuffed tiger.  She didn’t say anything.  “She’s shy,” I explained. The truth was she was scared we were doing something illegal. I recall walking home down North Street that day juggling this stuffed animal, about as big as my sister, feeling very proud I had won it.

However, recently I talked to my sister about this incident.  She didn’t recall anything about it.  She was eight at the time so I would have thought she would have remembered. Her lack of support for my version of events made me question my own memory, not hers. I don’t recall any large stuffed tiger at our house.  What was happening?  Did I fantasize about winning the tiger in the first place?  Perhaps day dreaming about winning and then playing out the possibilities mentally. Did I actually win it, but when I didn’t claim it, they gave it to someone else?  It is impossible to know at this point.

Such incidents concern me a bit. After all in this blog I am engaged in sharing my memories but every now and then the reliability of my own memory is called into question.  Are other memories as sketchy as this one?  We will never know, but here is what sustains me.  The essence of that day, the excitement of the free movie party at Christmas time, the possibility of winning gifts we would not receive otherwise, the insight into our developing personalities, me wanting to be seen as a grownup so refusing to claim the prize, my sister being worried she would get into trouble, are all true and illuminating regardless of which version of these events actually happened.

When I was in college, I recall being told in some psychology or anthropology course that every culture had about the same number of feast days or celebrations.  No matter if the society was modern or on a remote island, the number of days sanctioned as holidays--whether religious or secular --was the same.  I don't want to look at this too deeply for fear I will find out my memory of what I was told was faulty.   I want to accept this view of humanity.  I like the idea that in a city or on an island, in a jungle or high up in the mountains, because we are human, we all have the same need to celebrate. I like to think that Every Day is a Holiday worth celebrating.