Harrowgate Tales
Parade in Kensington - Harrowgate Memorial Day Parade
The Kensington-Harrowgate Combined Veterans Association will begin its annual Memorial Day parade at 1:30 P.M. from Frankford and Castor aves., "Honest John" rocket, an SS-10 proceeding south on Frankford to Susquehanna ave. Posts scheduled in the line of march are Kensington Post 68, Greenwood Post 78, Greenwood Post 332, Black-Coyle-McBride Post 839, all American Legion;
Allyn Capron Post 22 and Greater Kensington Post 3610, VFW, and Amvets Post 197. Music for the parade will be provided by Northeast Catholic, Bishop Egan, Cardinal Dougherty, St. Joseph's Prep, Camden Catholic and Northeast Boys high school bands.
Source: Inquirer 26 May 1963
One performance I personally remember was in a parade that was in Port Richmond, we were bused to different locations that day in a P.T.C. chartered bus. There I saw two amazing things. An old man of about ninety, skinny and tall and wearing what looked like Boy Scout Uniform with some medals and looking through thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle lenses of his eyeglasses. This old guy was an actual Veteran of the Spanish American War. Small world. There too, this is the late 60's, I saw my English teacher from freshman year who at that time was a seminarian studying to be a priest, teaching on a year long sabbatical of sorts, teaching in our high school for a year, after finishing four years of college in the seminary before continuing with an additional four years of seminary training after this year of teaching. It was after all a teaching religious order and his salary from the archdiocese no doubt went to support the order.
He was no longer in a black cassock but in a white tee shirt, shorts and sandals. He was also with what must have been his girlfriend. He saw me during a break from marching and said hello with no other explanation other than to say hello and ask how Junior year was going etc. I guess he left the seminary for one reason, reasons or another etc.
Marching in those parades was pretty routine. The most memorable thing was sweating in thick theater costume grade material uniforms along with dehydration and blisters on the feet marching in white bucks, part of the uniform. The worst was marching on uneven, not level, Belgian blocks still in between a lot of trolley tracks in the Northeast like up in front of St. Hubert's high school on Torresdale Avenue and across from a park. Usual performance at many Veterans and VFW Posts was playing the national anthem as they raised the Stars and Stripes up a flagpole, the local officials usually gave one or two short speeches. Then play something popular like "This is my country". And at ceremony's end would be our lead trumpet player playing "Taps".
There was usually one post that eventually feed us or serve cans of Coke as refreshment before we were off again on the bus to earn some more fees for the music department. The best food I ever remember being served was fresh cold cuts on rolls and refreshments in the basement of a local church participating with the Vets and their parade locally. That church being Our Lady of Consolation on Tulip.
Looking at the date of the above newspaper article, this parade was on a Sunday and they had not yet to start the official Memorial Day Federal Holiday to occur on the Monday of an artificial date three day weekend other than the decades old fixed traditional May 30th date, designed for a new leisure class mentality of the middle class. The dates the Feds have not touched are Christmas, New Years and the Fourth of July. Some dates are just sacred and secular forever.
The Sunday date might lend credence to the fact that for so many large local high school bands to participate, they would be be available before the actual holiday, and at a cheaper fee no doubt than on the high demand day of the holiday. Local music departments in high schools supplemented their budgets with fees from these marching appearances during the school year. An earlier celebration of the parade probably meant more bang for the buck for parade sponsors.
People would start to gather around noon at the beginning point of this parade at Frankford and Castor Avenues, in the shadow of the old, built 1902, three story George L. Horn grammar school, grades K-6. A hundred foot steel flagpole graced the front of the school. Large flagpoles being an important part of all nineteenth into twentieth century public buildings in Philly.
People would gather and grow as time got close, almost into a hard to walk through crowd at the starting point. Many kids would have their bikes all decked out with red white and blue crepe paper interwoven with the spikes of their wheels to make a vortex design when the wheels would turn as the kids followed the entire two miles plus distance from Harrowgate to Fishtown, the entire greater Kensington area from fish to chocolate at a local Harrowgate factory on Venango.
My dad would dig out his red cloth poppy from his dresser and wear it to avoid donating to a local Vets fund. Put some coins in the can and get a red cloth poppy to show solidarity with the Veterans. My dad who was not much a joiner in Vets or VFW posts, buying only day memberships to drink there on a Sunday. He was a WWII veteran, he figured he did his time/duty, was patriotic and even wore a red cloth poppy in a button hole to prove it.
In the distance up and down Castor and Frankford this side of the parade route, buses were arriving with band members and marchers etc.
The people, the crowds, the marchers, vendors with flags and balloons, the bands and army units getting into place, the sound of musicians doing scales before playing, warming up, the Army guys with guns doing a few last minute twists and turns with the barrels in practice for the regular present arms show, sounds sounded louder and louder as police arrived to direct traffic, crowd control and keep a general eye out on the crowd - all mushroomed into a genuine noise of voices, shouts, muddled cacophony of deafening sound until somebody blew a whistle or a shout - no doubt the drum major of the lead band - the crowd went silent and the band started the national anthem.
The army guys let go of a few rounds of ammunition in salute and started to march behind the front color guard with marching band following. Each in turn, groups of boy and girl scouts, floats, bands, marching Vets in uniform took their turn and followed in close order down the parade boulevard.
Along side the parade, kids on bikes, kids with flags, windmill pinwheel sticks moving in motion of hands, just kids and groupies of sorts marching along to the music and the cadence foot sound of marching.
Kids were scurrying in the street also between marchers to grab hold of the ejected hot brass casings from the guns salute.
The parade was on.
Besides the high school bands would be a few floats, some from the city pushing some new civic programs. Other floats were of patriotic themes and put together by the local Vet posts. Lot of flags, buntings, school girls, boys in Washington costumes etc.
Always a military color guard usually from some local National Guard Unit or some real Army types from the Frankford Arsenal, stationed there to protect the bullets and bombs made there. The Color Guard to lead the parade. Some soldiers in summer dress clothes with rifles to do a 21 gun salute after a band, usually the biggest like Cardinal Dougherty, with its coed marchers, stopped and did another national anthem and 21 gun salute at various points down the parade route.
Once or twice in the past the military had paraded a half-track or a small tank along Frankford Avenue in the parade but the machinery tore up the local streets, so that practice was discontinued. So the most we saw in a parade around 1963 would be an open backed Army truck with wooden benches full of troops to supplement the ones marching.
Slowly the crowd at Frandford and Castor funneled its ways down Frankford and snaked it way down all through greater Kensington.
Behind the parade a police car or two and a few street sweepers.
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