The long walk that wasn't.......

"There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir, we must rise and follow her...."

I can honestly say that those words have haunted me for most of my life, stuck so deep in my consciousness that I inevitably hear them play in my mind each autumn, just as western Maryland starts to bedeck herself in the astonishing tapestry that so uniquely defines the falling of the year. Interestingly, I first read them at the age of six or seven when looking through an old issue of the 1960's children's magazine Jack and Jill. The magazine had belonged to my brother, Wayne, when he was little, and the issue was from October 1965, the year I was born. In the middle of the magazine was a calendar that spilled across two pages. The dates themselves were on the lower half, with interesting, fall-flavored drawings of squirrels hiding acorns and fieldmice climbing up pumpkins, and assorted comments about noteworthy dates printed as if in the hand of some schoolkid. The top page was what got me, though, a colorful drawing of a stylized nighttime vista--an old fashioned, freshly harvested cornfield, with corn shocks (remember those?) stationed pell-mell, a harvest moon beaming in a star-speckled sky. In the foreground, luxuriously reclining on a fallen log, a brown bear sat cooking his supper over an open fire. He was dressed as a hobo, with a tattered, tweedy jacket, pants with patches on the knees, and a crumpled old hat that looked like something Red Skelton might have used sixty years ago for one of his personas. The bear was contentedly holding a stick over a small, crackling fire, patiently roasting a delightfully old-timey hot dog--the stereotypical kind curved almost like a banana, the casing twisted on each end. Beneath the picture was the banner OCTOBER 1965.

As a kid, there was something about that picture that profoundly lodged itself in my brain, and the 'There is something in October...." phrase was the annual caption that came back to me each fall, speaking to some hidden, complicated part of me. The verse is actually from the ancient poem A Vagabond Song, by William Bliss Carman. It ends with the line 'she calls and calls each vagabond by name', which speaks to me with a depth and power comparable to the opening words. A lifetime has passed since I first saw that calendar from my birth year, but each fall I find myself lulled into that wistful, searching mindset, that old familiar restlessness, the unheard clarion call that resonates in its absolute silence to stir me from some weighing slumber, suddenly alert to the bite of cool, fall air and the crisp scrape of fallen leaves....

This year was no exception, and again I felt the old, persistent tug. And, as I have in so many days gone by, I planned to find an outlet for that autumnal wanderlust walking down a very particular path, in very special company. Having been born and bred in Washington County, Maryland, I, like a myriad of others before me, have been a spectator throughout my span of years to an unusual procession which graces Hagerstown at the end of each October--the Mummer's Parade. Sponsored by the Alsatia Club, a local community organization, the 86 year-old parade is such a component of life in Hagerstown, attending it is almost autonomic. Younger generations might be less enamored with it, but to anybody who grew up in Washington County from the 40's through the 90's, the whole event is so drenched in nostalgia that you can't even describe it. As for mummers -- average joe's who dressed in homemade costumes and once formed a sizable contingent of the parade -- they're still there, although in vastly-diminished numbers. For years, the main elements have been the marching bands from every local middle and high school, fire, police, and rescue vehicles with lights flashing, local queens and princesses of clubs and schools being chauffeured in gorgeous antique automobiles, the Ali Ghan Shriners driving like kamikazes on go carts and miniature motorcycles at breakneck speed in intricate routes, and a score of elaborate floats for just about every civic and community organization. The parade assembles at Long Meadow shopping center, then meanders in a staggered loading of units from both Oak Hill Boulevard and Potomac Avenue, converging into the main route of Potomac Street. The march continues straight through downtown Hagerstown and finally concludes beyond the old Bester School in the south end....

In the 70's, there used to be even more bands, many of them from the Baltimore area. I always remember Johnnycake Middle School because of the unusual name, plus a plethora of others, much larger in membership than the Washington County groups. Over the years, the parade has been hosted by a vast array of Grand Marshals, one year even under the leadership of members of the 101st Airborne of Band of Brothers fame. All in all, in addition to the novelty of it being a nighttime parade, probably the most amazing element is that, seemingly, all of Hagerstown's population spills out onto the streets. The attendance fluctuates based on weather, and 'perfect parade weather' is definitely a subjective thing. Some people prefer those odd years when it's 70 degrees and feels more like late spring, but, especially to those of us who first experienced the parade in the 60's and 70's, when falls somehow seemed colder, the ideal clime is 45 degrees, clear, with no wind. Some years it's even been known to spit snow, which is fine in increments, but the worst, of course, is a soaking , raw rain.

The great memories I have of the parade as a kid were from my salad days of the very early 70's. In that quiet, little world where we watched ABC, NBC, and CBS (and maybe channel 5 out of DC) on our Zenith console TV that faded to life with painful slowness, there weren't the 50 billion electronic and digital distractions that cram their way into every facet of our modern existence. Back then, a parade meant something, so much so that you might find yourself sitting at school on the following Monday morning still imagining the marching bands in their precise, unfolding cadence, something special enough to replay and study when your mind was drifting off of something mundane like math or social studies. A guy my dad worked with at Mack Trucks lived in a house on South Potomac Street, right along the parade route, with a front porch that rubbed elbows with the sidewalk. We would usually take shelter on his porch, maybe going in to use the bathroom, and he and his wife would normally provide coffee or hot drinks to fight the ubiquitous chill. I also remember one year (1974, I think) when we watched raptly for hours a scene far more compelling than the parade. Across the street was a hair salon, the owners of which were hosting a parade-side costume party. The hosts and their guests were meandering through the ground level and upstairs rooms, gradually becoming more and more inebriated as the night wore long, eventually providing quite comedic (and unpredictable) entertainment of their own. Finally, the last band passed (by tradition, North Hagerstown High would start the parade one year and South Hagerstown High would end it, then they'd switch the following year) and we would trudge home. Sitting in my parents' kitchen, we would warm ourselves in the cozy room while my mother provided endless trays of buttered toast that we would munch with cup after cup of hot chocolate.....

I would never miss a parade--well, almost never. I distinctly remember one year in the very early 70's when my dad and I decided to stay home and watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show while Wayne and Mom went by themselves. But we were usually all together, and, when Wayne went off to the University of Virginia in '76 and then moved to Baltimore in '81, it became that much more special of an event. He would always try to make it home if he could, and from one of those parades during my teen years, he took an amazing photograph of Dad watching the cavalcade. My father was wearing a dark jacket and a hat that looked like an English roadster cap. Wayne took a picture of him standing in front of a stoop, looking toward the street, and it had a wonderful, Depression-era feel to it. He even entered it in a photo contest a few years later under the simple title Dad.......

But my greatest enjoyment of the Mummer's Parade is linked to 1983, when Wayne and I unwittingly created a tradition which has now permanently redefined this annual event. I remember I had taken the ACT college entrance exams and he had driven up from Baltimore. We had sat around playing guitar for a few hours, then headed off to the parade that evening. I remember it was damp and foggy, and I wore some long, heavy trenchcoat. And most of all, I remember that we walked. We walked from my parents' house in the north end of Hagerstown and headed to the parade route, then ambled along the venue rather than staying in one spot. And thus, our yearly vagabond journey was given birth....

But this year, we didn't get to go. In what is deserved of the Most Wretched Timing award of 2010, I came down with the worst case of strep throat I've ever had in my life on Friday, and wound up flat on my back through most of Monday. For the first year in more than I can remember, my brother and I didn't walk the old, familiar path in the Hagerstown afterlight. And I severely missed it. It's become so much more than just watching the parade--it's the one evening of each year that my brother and I shake off the cobwebs of advancing years and turn into those kids from 1973 who heaped raked leaves into a bulging pile and careened into it off the back porch in endless succession....

We leave our parents' house about a half hour before the parade starts, and walk briskly through the old neighborhood where it seemed like thousands of us kids trick-or-treated a lifetime ago. We cut down a street and into a newer housing development that used to be a cornfield in our childhood, the first of two cornfields, both bordered by dense, brooding woods. We always take a moment to notice the tall stand of trees which are the original ones that formed the dividing line between the two cornfields, patently obvious as they tower above their other, shorter sylvan cousins planted in the years since the new houses were put up. When we finally complete the two-mile jaunt to the edge of the parade route, we drop into our standard operating procedure: we walk along adjacent streets, down alleys and narrow lanes, paralleling the parade but only occasionally darting out into the throng on Potomac Street.....

Having an architect for a brother is fascinating, because we spend much of the time we're walking looking at all the obscure structural details that adorn so many of the huge, ornate old homes in the exclusive North Hagerstown enclave known as the Terrace. Our favorite is a preposterous Victorian with a high, narrow cupola, in which there's usually a flickering candle. It speaks to us as the perfect embodiment of those great old houses from the books we revered as kids like The Mad Scientists' Club or The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald. When we finally do make it onto Potomac Street, we push our way through the crowds and look in amazement at the lumbering mansions that line the first several blocks. It's the one night of the year that you can stroll along at a leisurely pace in the relative obscurity of 25,000 other people, and note all the gimcracks and curlicues that seem to somehow evaporate in the light of day when you're in a clump of traffic, blowing down Potomac en route to Sharpsburg or the Outlet Malls, or somewhere else seemingly more important......

And the one special, uniquely Washington County-esque element we can never do without occurs when we amble up to a concession tent in front of one of the big, beautiful churches somewhere along Potomac and order the signature food of old Hagerstown--a steamer. Steamers are completely impossible to explain to someone not from here. They are made from ground beef served on a hamburger bun, but they are absolutely, inargubly not sloppy joes. They are much less sloppy and much more judiciously seasoned. Every mom in the county, every church, club, civic group, and other social entity, has its own recipe. I don't know if they still do, but the county schools used to serve them about once a week all year long. They're all similar enough to be steamers and yet different enough to maintain a distinctive flair, jealously guarded concoctions that are the food of choice for high school football games, summer carnivals, and the Mummer's Parade. And they exist only in Washington County--go further east in the state looking for one and people will think you're asking for steamed shrimp. Cross the Mason-Dixon line and South-Central Pennsylvanians will look at you like you have three heads. The best ones are served wrapped in wax paper, their amazing aroma drifting heavenward in the chilly October night...

So that's the long walk.....my brother and I trudging through a sea of humanity, the parade more a backdrop now to our autumnal journey, the memories of countless Saturday evenings strung back into the 60's overlapping, juxtaposed against the foreground act of two brothers, not quite so young as they once were, clipping at a brisk gait through the old, familiar thoroughfares, looking with amazement at incredible old houses we've seen five hundred times as if we'd never glimpsed them before, then up a secret path behind North Hagerstown High School where we used to sled down the huge hill on winter evenings decades ago, into the quiet enclave of our old neighborhood, to our parents' house for a quick coffee before we disappear to our own homes...

And this year, I missed it. I had waited 52 weeks for our yearly pilgrimage, but the evening came and went, and the next time my brother and I sojourn out to canvas the town, it'll be that much more removed from the past. But the wonderment will still be there. And I will find myself thinking again of that simple drawing of a forlorn bear from October 1965, when I was so very young, and so many walks were yet to be taken. And my brother and I will be pulled out into the chilly air of early evening, the distant sound of muffled drums and muted brass instruments, the sense of a surging throng just a few miles away, behind the eaves and gables of the beautiful, old dwellings. And we'll jog along in the night like we always do, following the siren song of irresistible October. How do I know? Because she calls and calls each vagabond by name.....

Home is the sailor, home from the sea........

It's funny how life unfolds--sometimes in overdrive, pedal pushed to the floor mats, then in a breath, the pause button is punched and the picture freezes, a few pixels missing here and there....

I opened a new blog entry tonight for the first time since July of 2009. I knew it had been ages since I last rambled on for the benefit of the brave (and misguided) few who choose to grace this page, but I was absolutely astonished that fifteen months had elapsed since I had made an entry. The themes that dominated the posts of 2009 were primarily musical, an exciting array of coffee-house gigs with my guitarist accomplice Bobby, reiterating the Beatles' catalog and throwing in the occasional Irish singer/songwriter piece or original. Those were heady times, to be sure, as I ventured back into public performance for the first time in years. Bobby and I continued to write, record, and perform, and it looked as if music was going to be the main focus for the rest of 2009.....

I don't know what happened to derail that, really......Bobby and I continued to play together at church, and still managed to slip the odd coffee house appearance in here and there. But the year grew old and the days grew short, and soon it was 2010 and snow was dropping for what seemed like months. The very cold and white winter slid into the scorching, bone-dry Sahara of summer, and I found myself changing jobs and summarily losing all sense of artistic focus. Bobby and I played out a few more times, sporadically at best, and weeks went by without me even touching the guitar......

And now it's the end of October, and the breezes that blow down from South Mountain to dislodge the vermilion leaves are stirring my artistic sensibility as well. But, as of late, I've actually found myself returning to my first love--writing. I had started writing short stories when I was about 8....pathetic tales of pirates and the like, and, by the time I was 14, I had lapsed into underdeveloped science fiction, heavily emulating the style of Ray Bradbury. Then I picked up a guitar and pretty much walked away from writing for the next 30 years.....

2003 was the strangest year of my life, and the fall found me starting to write a full length novel--a long, full length novel--that stayed stubbornly unfinished for about three years. With the gentle, inspiring prodding of my wife, Alison, I picked it back up in '07, brought it to a conclusion, and finally rewrote the ending just a few short months ago. Then, through an amazing set of circumstances only God could have engineered, I suddenly found myself in communication with an editor at a publishing company in Tennessee, and now my manuscript is in mid-editing, judicious trimming to bring it to a readable length, with imminent publication likely by the end of the year.........

And so, the pause button is released again. Thirty years after I sat in my parents' basement and pounded away on an ancient Smith-Corona elite typewriter, scratching an eraser across the onion paper and brushing the failings of my mis-keyings away, I now find myself back at the same PC from whence I started this blog on a freezing January night almost two years ago. Then, my creative project was an album of praise music, still unfinished on my dust-shrouded digital recorder. I'll probably pull it out again in the not-too-distant future and try to remember how I wanted to finish the skeletal frameworks of the songs which sit, patient and idling, waiting for the day my brain inevitably swings back to that artistic discipline.....

But for now, I'm back to a more distant creative origin. Words flow non-stop in my brain awake or asleep. Every now and then, I can string them together in a coherent enough fashion to make something of at least mild interest to others. With my novel soon to see the light of day, I hope my sphere of influence is ever widening. Part of me still feels like I did at eight, composing tales for my own amusement. I've hopefully stepped into a completely new season. Either way, it feels great to be home.......