4th of July in Pittsfield

Great memories!  Every 4th of July we would pack everyone into my dad’s two-tone green 1947 Chevy coupe, sometimes with a picnic lunch, and head “over the mountain” to Pittsfield for the day’s festivities.

We’d go to Gramp’s house on Adam Street, meet with him and Lucy and go over to North Street to watch the grand parade.  It was over-populated with both fire department teams, their engines (sirens blaring – which went on all day long) and marching drum and bugle corps from all over New England.

After the parade we would go back to the house and have a snack or lunch and go to the park for the fireman’s muster and drum and bugle corps competitions.  All afternoon you could watch the marching groups or fireman flying by on fire engines racing to beat the competition, all to the Sousa type background music.

What observer, young (me – 7) or old (Gramp – 90) wasn’t thrilled to see a team of firemen jump on the truck at the starting line, get to the 2^nd story platform, throw the ladder up with a fireman already more than half way to the top and pull the dummy to safety (I’m glad they never had to save me that way) while sliding down the edges of a ladder.  Or how about a team sprinting from the starting line, jumping onto the back of a pumper, accelerating about a hundred yards, fireman jumping off the back of the moving engine, pulling out the hose and hooking it up to a hydrant, while the truck sped off to the designated spot, other fireman pulling out the hose, getting pressure up and hitting a target with the water stream – all in a matter of seconds, not minutes.  What could go wrong? — a lot, that’s the material for comedy skits.

What more could a 7 year-old ask?  How about a ride or two at the carnival, dinner and fireworks.  What a day!  I have absolutely no recollection of what the ride home was like, or even how I ended up in bed the next morning.  I wonder now how my dad did it.

I couldn’t find any family photos of these Independence day celebrations (the above is the best I could do off my pc), but I really don’t need them – the memories are vivid!