Good Morning Justin

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 14 December

Good Morning Justin…

Saturday night was the occasion for the biggest event of the year.  It was time to flood the center of town with season greeters dressed in their best winter garb.  We all count the days until the annual Kannapolis Christmas Parade.

Out front of the Old Stone Vino they were selling hot chocolate and cider so long as it lasts.  As it turns out it didn’t last all that long.

The owners of this establishment once provided the townsfolk with fine cuisine and wine that featured intriguing complexity.  But they gave up.  Now they offer everyone’s favorite fare – burgers and brew.

Dogs always make their appearance at the parade.  This year featured a three legged dog running down the center of the street.  I couldn’t get a picture of him.  He was too fast.

Some floats assembled across from a field, near the Exxon station and local minimart.  People were anxious to get the procession started.

With a flurry of police sirens the parade officially begins just as the clock strikes six.  It’s about the lights, you know, so we wait until it’s good and dark.

We’re standing at the intersection of Main and Earnhardt Boulevard – named after hometown hero Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR’s famous number 3.  We have a statue nearby, commemorating his life.

It’s good to have your smartphone with plenty of battery life so you can record these special moments.  It makes for good viewing on Facebook.

People arrive in seasonal hats and they aren't always in the parade itself.  No one need be a mere bystander to the celebration.

Here comes the Fire Department.  Some people make it here every year – among them a local pizza parlor and a dentist handing out toothbrushes.  I didn’t see the tow truck company this year, though.

I didn’t see a single person inside the police station.  Ring the bell inside and no one answers.  They were all at the parade.

You know one thing that makes a kid happy?  Put them in a small wooden wagon with plenty of bright lights and pull them down the street.  They were too shy to shout “Merry Christmas” but people cheered anyway.

This old guy’s bones ache from the cold but no one is going to keep him from enjoying the magic of the season.  It’s a moment to feel truly grounded.  You’re a part of something joyful.  Kind of makes one a little teary.  Your nose begins to run.

There were so many bands in the parade this year.  I think there must have been seven or eight.  Buses brought them in from North Cabarrus and Rowan County.  There was even the Marching Hawks from West Mecklenburg, near Charlotte.    They were definitely something jazzy and new.

People came for the lights and, seriously, this parade was definitely about the lights.

What’s a Christmas parade without a manger scene?  Here we have Joseph and Mary with the Christ child.  Santa was there, as well.  He’s been around a long time.

I wonder how many people asked this guy if the parade is going to be on local TV news.

One of the more shocking moments of the parade came with the surprise appearance of the Abominable Snowman.

It took over an hour and a half for all the participants to march by.  As always, I think there were more people in the parade than there were standing by watching.

Don’t you know it was a chorus line of little girls that stole the show?

It was the Kannapolis Wonders band of A. L. Brown High School that finished out the parade… just ahead of Santa and his sleigh, of course.  Ho, ho, ho.

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 15 December

Ho!  Ho!  Ho!

Saturday night was the annual Kannapolis Christmas Parade where half the town shows up to watch the other half parade by as caroling church groups, the high school band, children dancing, the local dentist handing out toothbrushes and Freddie Krueger making an appearance in support of the battle against cystic fibrosis.  The main street through the heart of the old mill town is lined with families bundled up fat in layered clothes to ward off the chill of mid-December.  The older folks bring folding chairs from home to sit in while nestled beneath that great quilt blanket they got years ago from Aunt Betty.  Her hearing has gotten so bad, you know.  She’s practically stone deaf.  The funny thing is, and this is so true, she picks up the phone when you ring her but, then, she talks as though she’s guessing at what it is you just said.  It’s got to be lonely for her still living on that farm way north of here out on highway 601.  It’s good to ring her now and then but the conversation that follows just doesn't make much sense, bless her heart.

A few of the farmers in the area show up on horseback for the parade.  Their wife might even be riding next to them.  It’s possible someone shows up in fancy get up but, more than likely, they’re wearing Levis and a jacket with a fleece-lined collar.  In any case, they become our very own Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, waving and greeting by name the occasional familiar face they see in the crowd.  Those faces get fewer by the year.  This is a growing town, you know.  It’s not like we’re a crossroads with a feed store and a Winn Dixie for a grocer.  We've got our own mall now.  It has a food court, too, just like the big malls you see in Charlotte.  We’re even starting to see a bit of our own traffic congestion at Christmas time.  People backed up trying to do their mall shopping.  You got to know they’re mostly a bunch of Yankees that moved here from up north.  I hope they know having a North Carolina driver’s license doesn't make them a genuine Tar Heel.  Don’t get me wrong.  They’re good people, for the most part.  It’s just that they are on probation.

I like seeing the big trucks all decked out in Christmas lights.  They pull those flatbed trailers behind them that carry some costumed community group in a manger scene or singing while sitting on bales of hay or something.  Now days more and more of them are using amplified guitars and other such nonsense.  Hey, does anyone there realize it’s Christmas?  Whatever happened to Silent Night?  I like upbeat music as much as the next guy but that’s what the marching band is for, right? 

Here’s something I know you’re really going to like.  The local Fire Department’s fire truck is slowly cruising by with festive lights on it.  The fireman driving it has his whole family in the cab with him and the truck’s public address speaker is blasting out some three year old crying out “Merry Christmas!”  You think that kid feels like this is a big deal or what?  You better believe it.  Of course, next year he’s going to want to do it all over again but then he’ll discover that being four is now too old for the job.  The magic that goes with being three is highly under-appreciated. 

Santa Claus is always the finale.  He looked really good this year in his sleigh and eight miniature reindeer frozen in the process of taking flight.  I liked the fact that he wasn’t wearing horned-rimmed glasses.  This guy looked like the real deal and not some book-keeper phoning in the part.  He was truly merry.  He waved just like you would expect he would but he also had a microphone in his hand and he sounded truly concerned that you were staying warm enough.  I was a little worried about him.  I bet that Santa outfit isn't all that warm.  It’s definitely not North Pole material.  If you’re doing Santa in one of these cold night parades you've got to be wearing the long johns.  It’s not good for kids to see a shivering, miserable Santa Claus.  It’s just wrong having people feel sorry for poor Santa.  He’s the last thing we see.  He puts the exclamation mark on our parade night memory.  He warms our insides and lights up our life with a heart-felt and jolly “Merry Christmas!”   

Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to My Son
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.  Jake and I had come across one of many 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; their sirens wailing and their colored beams of lights spinning across faces in the crowd.  Interspersed throughout the parade were large formations of kids from the area’s dance studios moving to the music provided by loudspeakers attached to the roofs of tag-along cars.  The kids were all brightly costumed and probably quite cold as they trooped gamely by, the youngest of them mostly walking along, too bewildered for dancing as they gazed into all the strange faces starring back at them all along the way.  The two rival high schools provided the marching bands – the Wonders of Kannapolis’s A. L. Brown High School and the competing Spiders of nearby 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