Benjamin Watching the Parade

The parade is over. The carnival has closed and by tomorrow the carnival trucks will leave and be on their way to someone else's town for someone else's celebration. Right after the parade, the first groups of cars started leaving town and by seven o'clock tonight there was hardly a car or a person in sight. It's time to roll up our sidewalks and go back to being a sleepy little town again. I like it that way.

But, for a while, we were something else. We were blaring and loud, we were big and brash. We were everyone's fun place to be and I liked that, too! A good many of our out of town visitors are people who grew up here and had to move away to get an education and/or a good job. But Florence still feels like home to them and so, they come back to celebrate, to visit, to renew old friendships and just to be kids again. Down on Bay Street for three or four nights you can hear their laughter, their shouts and their ooohs and aaahs! Add a little alcohol and music to the mix and the camaraderie knows no bounds!

About three days before the festival the first of the bikers arrive. Their Harleys have not a speck of dust on them so I know that these rough, tough leathered guys must stop outside of town and polish their bikes before crossing the bridge into Florence - but I won't tell if you won't! They line their bikes up in perfect precision and I tell my husband I want to tip the first one into the second one and see if they all go down like dominos so he keeps a close eye on me because these guys are a tough looking bunch and he doesn't think we would like the results of my experiment!

With townspeople, bikers, farmers and out of town visitors, you can imagine that once in a while an altercation might develop but it usually isn't serious and is usually quickly put to rest. After all, who wants to spoil all the fun by being carted off to jail?

But, by late Sunday everyone has been to see the classic cars, run in the Rhody Run, ridden on the rides,visited the art shows, the food vendors, the souvenir shacks and the flower displays. All the fun to be had has been had! It's time to go home. The party is over. The sidewalks are indeed rolled up and the only things left behind are a bit of litter and a lot of good memories to last another year....and I like it that way.