(HOST) Vermont summers are famous for local festivals, celebrations and parades. Commentator Vic Henningsen is particularly fond of one he calls "intensely local" – one that will happen again this coming Monday morning.
(HENNINGSEN) There’s an old joke about the annual Labor Day parade and chicken barbeque in Post Mills – that the parade steps off at 11:30 sharp and the barbeque begins as soon as the parade ends – at 11:33.
It’s not quite that short, but it isn’t much longer. A small squad of veterans leads off, followed by farm equipment, old cars, a few floats, the town dump trucks and fire equipment. And that’s pretty much it.
It always backs up traffic on Rte 113: last year I counted two bicycles, a pickup, and four cars, one of which – an old Chevy – managed to avoid the delay by joining the parade, slipping into the antique car line.
My favorite part is the old tractors. It’s a testament to the mechanical abilities of my neighbors that so many of these things still run – a small 1950 Farmall Super A, a 1954 Case 50 tractor and corn-planter, Allis-Chalmers rigs of various sizes, a few Massey-Fergusons, and the usual line of John Deeres. The numbers of machines here testify to their owners’ reluctance to part with something they truly care for. We celebrate our tractors. There’s even an antique tractor society over to Ely that regularly cranks up fall cavalcades. Towing wagons full of children and grandchildren, they make daylong tours of scenic dirt roads in the area – something I learned one beautiful fall morning when they chugged through my dooryard.
There must be a Vermont law requiring towns to end every holiday parade with a chicken barbecue benefiting the volunteer fire department. If not, there ought to be, for this is the highlight of summer’s end – a time when the entire community marks a seasonal change, touching base en masse before the cold closes in. A friend waves from her perch on a town firetruck; a neighbor’s grandchildren throw candy from their float advertising – what? The library, I think, but which one? Watching the parade or standing in line for chicken I know I’ll run into my old boss; the guy I bought my house from who brings his kids back from Montpelier for this; all of my neighbors on the road; my favorite cousin who lives just across town; the postmaster; the auctioneer.
Our talk is of haying, the corn crop, milk prices, the start of school, recent vacations, the health of elderly friends and relatives – the conversational small change that keeps neighborhoods and entire towns together. Then I overhear a few guys in a pickup talking deer season and that remind me that this is summer’s last hurrah.
The big challenge of the day is biking three and a half miles uphill back to my house after all that chicken. But I’m relaxed and happily full, content to take my time. And it doesn’t even bother me that much that every year I get passed by a local kid on a unicycle.