3/16/2023 0 Comments Spectacle portlandIt was the 1950s, when children played outside in the summer, and woe to the child who disobeyed someone else’s mother, Larry remembered. That sense of community cut both ways, however, Larry said. If someone was sick, we made food to bring to your house.” Everyone looked out for each other,” Larry said. We used to have picnics on the sand bank and swim in the (Connecticut) river,” Larry recalled. “We had a sand bank down near the ‘Come On Over’ sign. “There was a real sense of community,” Larry said of the now-lost neighborhood. “Because we had Smith’s Luncheonette, the only reason we came up onto Main Street was to get medications - and to go to school,” Jo-Ann Chatfield said. “We sold food and we also cooked it,” Larry recalled. It was Smith’s family that opened Smith’s Luncheonette in 1946 at 49 Lower Main St. The neighborhood is gone now, lost to “redevelopment.”īut as they sat watching the parade, a wave of memories washed over Thelma Chatfield and her daughter Jo-Ann, and their friend Grace Smith Larry. Christie Carpino.Īs much as the parade represented fun, so too was the response from the crowd that watched and the children who gloried in the unfettered joy of splashing in the puddles that were generated by the not-quite 15-minute-long shower.įor three women, the celebration recalled life in their old neighborhood, which was clustered in and around Lower Main Street. John Larson walked the entire two-mile parade route in the company of four of the town’s selectmen, state Sen. Nancy Wyman began the parade, staying long enough to get rained on before moving on to attend another event. In short, there was something for everyone, from a marching librarian (Janet Nocek), 4-H archers, the Middletown Police PBA bagpipe band to perhaps a half-dozen fife and drum units.Īnd Portland responded to its “gift” with thousands of residents lining both sides of Main Street as the parade wended its way south from the starting point at Fire Co. The parade featured everything from a rolling church congregation to two live oxen (complete with two specially trained oxen pooper-scoopers), mini-pirates courtesy of the Gildersleeve School, a horse team pulling the Peterson Oil Tank, and Wayne Carini towing a historic Strong & Hale Lumber Co. In between, the procession turned Main Street into a rolling kaleidoscope of what makes Portland Portland, and represented one big bundle of fun. The parade began with a summer shower but ended under blazing sunshine.
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