Warren Fourth remains quirky
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The Prickley Mountain parade float, made to look like a giant slug, lumbers down the crowded streets of Warren during the town's Fourth of July celebrations Saturday morning. PHOTO BY TIM CALABRO |
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By David Delcore STAFF WRITER - Published: July 5, 2009
WARREN Rebecca Peatman had been down this parade route a time or two before, just never as grand marshal.
That changed on Saturday, when Peatman, whose home overlooks the thin strip of asphalt that is Main Street in the tiny town that bills itself as "The Fourth of July Capital of the Universe," cruised through her community in a 1965 Thunderbird convertible.
The top was down.
Thanks to some tardy parade participants including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. a 20-minute delay in the 10 a.m. start time allowed a steady rain that fell for much of the morning to subside before Clive Bridgham got Warren's 61st annual Fourth of July parade off to the start he always does by firing a cannon passed down from his grandfather.
Peatman, 77, said she was tickled by the offer to preside over her town's always quirky, often comical, and sometimes off-color parade.
"It's an honor," said the red-white-and-blue-clad former town treasurer, who usually watches the parade with her family from her front lawn, but has participated before.
Back in her PTA days "sometime around 1960" a much younger Peatman volunteered to be "the old woman who lived in a shoe," and more than 30 years later she actually performed a wedding ceremony aboard a decorated flatbed truck as it rolled through the heart of her hometown.
"That was something," recalled Peatman, who explained she had some extra special post-parade plans on Saturday.
"I'm marrying my grandson on my back lawn," she said.
Technically, Peatman wasn't "marrying" her grandson, Jared, but he was getting married and Peatman was performing the ceremony.
"It'll be memorable," predicted Jared Peatman, who grew up in Maine, but always spent his Independence Days in Warren a family tradition that prompted his fiancιe, Melinda Wilson, to suggest they tie the knot on Warren's big day.
The young couple couldn't have picked a better time and place, according to the man who has been the voice behind the Warren parade for the past 28 years.
"No one else has a Fourth of July parade like this," Alasdair "Atty" Munro crowed. "You won't find one anywhere!"
"Thank God," chuckled Eric Friedman one of the local folks recruited to judge entries in a parade that was rained on for the first time in Munro's memory, but not nearly as hard as it would have been if it had actually started on time.
However, Munro noted "time" was a relative thing when it comes to a parade that is long on creativity and short on choreography.
"We're on 'Warren time' here," Munro bellowed, attempting to explain a rather sizable gap between two of Saturday's parade entries.
"Some of the floats, believe it or not, are still being assembled," he said.
One of them was a 40-foot long slug produced by Jim Sanford and the folks from the Prickly Mountain development.
A regular parade participant since 1970, Sanford said constructing the huge slug was a collaborative idea that had a whole lot more to do with the fact that "everyone is complaining about slugs this summer" than the parade's theme: "It's Easy Being Green."
"We almost never do what the topic is," Sanford said, noting Prickly Mountain's entries usually have at least three things in common.
"They've got to be big, they've got to be simple and they've got to do something during the parade," he said. "They have to be transformational."
The huge slug was rearing high into the sky its long antennae reaching in vain for a large strawberry while leaving a telltale trail of slime as it made its way down the rain-soaked roadway.
However, as creative as the slug was it left Friedman and the judges wanting.
"Most Sluggish?" Friedman said, suggesting a possible award for Prickly Mountain, whose entry last year, "The Bummer" a huge gas-guzzling Hummer that gave birth to an electric car on the parade route was still being talked about the this year.
That was slightly better than the category created for Warren resident Tim Seniff: "Most Misunderstood."
A costumed Seniff, who was a pushing a wheelbarrow, stopped in front of the reviewing stand and held up a cardboard sign that said: "What makes grass green?" He then proceeded to toss a mock corpse and a few body parts on a piece of green plastic and water them with a can of gasoline, before picking the mess up with a pitchfork and moving on.
As is usually the case with the parade Seniff wasn't the only person to make a political statement.
The Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force got a hearty round of applause from an umbrella-toting crowd that numbered in the thousands, and a Greenpeace sign called on state regulators to: "Retire Vermont Yankee."
Despite the left-leaning rhetoric, capitalism was alive and well in Warren on Saturday as vendors were doing a brisk business, the Warren Store was mobbed particularly when the rain was falling and even lemonade-peddling entrepreneurs, like 9-year-old Ian Groom, were out for some quick cash.
Last year, Groom sold enough lemonade on the Fourth of July to buy an I-Pod after splitting proceeds with his younger brother, Luke.
Organizers estimated the crowd at between 4,000 to 6,000 people.
Some, like Massachusetts resident Jennifer Pettit, traveled many miles for the parade.
"There's nothing like it," said Pettit, 61, who has been making the annual pilgrimage for longer than she can remember.
"It's become a tradition
rain or shine," she said, noting that while she used to bring her daughter, Isa, now 22, her daughter brought friends of her own this year.
"I'm sure after I stop coming, she'll keep coming," said Pettit, who is visiting Waitsfield resident Sue Thomas.
Thomas said there was no one word to describe the Fourth of July in Warren.
"It's political, it's fun, it's creative, it's joyous, it's community," she said. "I think that pretty well sums it up."
david.delcore@timesargus.com
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