Easter Parade

They told us there was to be an Easter parade, with prizes for the best-dressed, unless the fire alarm sounded "no-parade today".

The wife and I decided to combine our Easter walk with a crack at the parade prizes. The mere fact that a determined April shower was flooding the landscape made no never-mind. She had her umbrella to protect what might have been an Easter bonnet once upon a time. And she was more than glad to have the umbrella cover both tops, hers and his. But down through the years, the thought of hiding beneath a bumbershoot has appeared to us to be bowing to a possible feminine trait within. In short, they told us it was sissified; a soaked felt is preferable.

First off we noted our chances at running off with the biggest awards were mighty high. We were the only ones hiking. Hundreds wee dry riding and probably wondering how primitive could you be walking on such a day. Across the street were quite a few in their new Easter togs making a bee-line from their cars to get inside Spiran Hall where a wedding reception was in progress. We rather pitied them getting those creations soggy.

Up along Broadway we saw that after all these years, Dr. Earl F. Greene was having a fence of shrubbery rim his grounds and a wire fence to give the shrubs a chance to reach some height. It could be OHI (Operation Home Improvement).

Ever try to take notes in the rain? Don't. Pencil marks are apt to be smudged out by the impatient drops from above. Words fast lose their shape and their meaning.

Our attention this time was called to old weathervanes on old barns that once housed horses and carriages, but in these days are used for storage, studios and even garages.

The late Judge York's property on King Street, the big yellow barn with its cupola on top, has a fetching yellow horse, its nose to the weather. It has perched up there for years, letting the neighborhood know which way the wind's a-blowin'. This barn also has two miniature openings side by side near the peak, openings that were the owner's concession to the little birds to let them go in and out of the barn. Garages lack these little considerations to our feathered friends. But whoever said there was as much humaneness in gas buggies as in the old carriages?

Farther along we spied another horse, also gold in color, standing weather guard atop a white barn with a blue top. In the same neighborhood was the barn of the late Louis Rogers. Here the weathervane was a sailing ship heading always right into the wind. These are only a few of the interesting vanes dotting the Cape.

Down on Beach Street at Granite Street we enjoyed the sight of one of the few stone barns, as rugged as the famed rock of Gilbralter...good old Rockport granite! The barn is apt to outlive the town itself.

Here we were hailed by a motoring friend who asked if we wanted a lift home. We didn't. He did tell us that Saturday night he and his wife heard the peepers for the first time. To us that's a most welcome sign of spring's sure arrival. We have yet to hear it this year. But already we had another sure sign of Spring's official presence, Iver Rose, Main Street summer fixture, and a fine artist from Manhattan, was in town over a recent week-end. A perennial for 30 years he dates the season for old-time Rockporters like ourselves.

The clean sharp smell of the sea accompanied us along Back Beach where we saw that the strong nor'easter had littered the grass strip between the sidewalk and the strand with cobbles of all sizes, washed up from the beach. That summer picnic ground may be lost unless the cobbles are cleared.

Seaweed, glistening dark brown, was massed along the entire wall of Front Beach right up to the wall top and was thickly mixed with all manner of debris, driftwood, broken spars and what-have-you. A large stone appeared dislodged from the wall close to the beach at the rest house.

By this time we felt the full force of that drenching. As for the awards from the Easter parade, it finally dawned on us that the parade wass scheduled for Gloucester --not Rockport--and that if the alarm calling it off had been sounded, we would hardly hear it down here. But the walk was good, the baptism helpful. That's award enough for anyone.

J.P.C., Jr.