9 December, Sunday
Good Morning Jacob…
The dog Jake and I got a late start on our walk this
morning. It was sunny and already almost
warm by the time we came across a large flatbed truck trailer parked in a field
near the brick Methodist church that faces Main Street . A gathering of kids and their parents were
busy placing bales of hay on the trailer, using a step ladder at its tail end
to climb aboard. The hay bales were
centered and lined up as seats for nearly the length of the trailer. A Christmas tree, naked of ornaments, was
placed to end the bales. On each of the
trailer’s sides hung a large yellow sign, showing the diamond symbol of Cub
Scouts above words proclaiming it to be Pack 87, Franklin
Heights Baptist Church Kannapolis
floats being readied to wheel down Main Street
that evening for the annual Christmas parade.
It was very cold at last year’s parade and it took close to
two hours for half of the community to pass in review for the benefit of the
community’s other half, lined along the roadway, sitting in lawn chairs,
bundled in bulky coats and wrapped in blankets, sipping hot beverages of coffee
and cocoa. Numerous church groups sang
carols on the decks of trailers as they passed, being pulled by trucks of
various description and by farm tractors, cleaned up from the muck of field
work. The town’s fire trucks were part
of the parade as were patrol cars of the Kannapolis
police and the sheriff’s of Cabarrus County A. L.
Brown High School Concord . It seemed to me that Concord ’s
band was the more energized and crisp of the two during last year’s Christmas
parade. It’s possible they were making a
statement after having lost The Bell to the Wonders in the final football game
of the season. The finale of each
regular season is the game between these two longtime historic rivals to
determine which school has possession of a large bell, attached to a wheeled
cart. The winning school paints the bell
with its school colors and displays it as a trophy over the next year. This year The Bell reverted back to the
Spiders of Concord in a hard-fought upset over the favored Kannapolis
team. The Bell
is also a part of the parade, at least when Kannapolis
holds it.
Of course, Santa is the celebrated finale, drawing the
parade to a close. The sound of cars
idling becomes a chorus as parents tuck chilled children inside. Headlamps stream to the street and cops with
flashlights and whistles do their best to disentangle the crowd of vehicles all
trying to leave the area at once. This
year’s parade participants and followers benefited from temperatures that
dropped only into the fifties. Still,
the Kannapolis turnout was thinned a bit by
adversity. The local hospital is filled
with people struck with the flu. Many of
the nurses are also out with this year’s flu despite having been inoculated
with their mandatory flu shot. It’s
already a bad flu season but better to get it now and out of the way instead of
being in bed Christmas day, too sick to open presents under the tree. Can you imagine a Christmas morning, with
gifts waiting, and everyone parked beneath the blankets of their bed, unwilling
to tear free the wrapping paper from presents, unable to ride new bikes up and
down the street? This would be the
season of a truly Grinch flu. Where’s
the Gingerbread cookies? Where’s the
cinnamon eggnog? No, we mustn't think of
such a catastrophe. It’s just wrong to
even bring it up. I’m so sorry. Hand me another log for the fire. Happy holidays one and all.
Love,
Dad
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