Mummified

If you live in or near Philadelphia, there’s no escaping it. It’s a part of every New Year’s Day whether you love it or hate it. It’s background noise or the center of attention and lasts all day and well into the evening. Anyone living in the Delaware Valley knows that the Mummers will strut down Broad Street every January first, weather permitting.
It’s a proud Philadelphia tradition like Mardis Gras is to New Orleans. It’s unique-there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world, and some people might say thank goodness for that.
The Mummers have a long history in the City of Brotherly Love. It started out as groups of impromptu revelers roamed the streets of Philadelphia, ushering in the new year with noise and song, a louder and bawdier version of caroling. The party goers would dress themselves in costumes; a roving masquerade ball. Some of the revelers would fire off their muskets, “shooting in” the year to come, giving birth to the name Mummers and Shooters. The popularity of the celebration grew until finally in 1901 the first “official” Mummers Parade was sponsored by the city.
The Mummers Parade was powerful stuff in the 50s and 60s. My mother loved it, so it would be on the TV ALL DAY and into the night. I didn’t get it. Grown men dressing like women and clowns in sequins and feathers and gold lame and their faces painted in garish make-up, dancing down the street in the thousands.
This wasn’t for me. I wanted to watch cowboys or cartoons, anything that would break up the monotony and release us from the sound of off-key saxophones. That was another thing I didn’t understand:they were called string bands, but all I could hear were the saxophones and the glockenspiels and the accordions. You could see them playing banjos, but they were awfully hard to hear. And it went on and on and on. Comic brigades, fancy brigades and string bands in the wind and the rain and the freezing cold of winter. Scores of people standing and sitting out in the cold, lining the parade route, cheering on Ferko and Overbrook, Kensington and Fralinger and what seemed like a million others.
If it was a mild New Year’s day, we could get outside for a while and escape all the madness. Usually it was freezing cold, so my brother and I would hole up in our room with the door closed, playing with all the new toys we had gotten for Christmas. Many a comic book would be read and re-read. No matter what we did or where we went that day, the Mummers Parade would follow. If we went to see our neighbors, it would be on. If we went to visit our relatives, it would be on. After twelve, fourteen even sixteen hours of this, we'd be begging Mom to turn it off, please couldn't we watch some REAL TV? But no, we'd have to endure until the last, until the final string band had played. And then it would be over for another year,the last day of Christmas vacation spoiled by a bunch of crazy people over in Philly.
But it wouldn't let go, no it wouldn't be that easy.
On the way back to school I'd find myself humming "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" on and on and on and on......
Happy New Year!