March musings

With parades in both Pottsville and Girardville I am Celticly exhausted.
You have to admit it though; Girardville’s parade, although great, was not the same without Clinton marching.
Yes, I understand that both Hillary and Bill had busy calendar engagements. Hillary’s was with some foreign dignitary and Bill’s was with Miss March and Miss April, but why no Chelsea or Roger? The closest we got to a Clinton was listening to the rollicking bag pipe rendition of George Clinton’s “Nubian Nut” performed by the soulful Heckscherville Hiberianators.

Wanting to look fresh for the Girardville Parade, I decided to take my kilts (all soiled after the ten minute Pottsville parade and the ten hour Humane fire house extravaganza) to the cleaners in Schuylkill Haven.

Mammy stayed home and tried her best to recondition our plastic green hats.

Did you ever try getting dents out of plastic green hats? It is very, very difficult and usually you end up with noticeable, white creases, but Mammy has the magic touch to bring old plastic hats back to life.
I had trouble getting into Haven as it was St. Joseph’s Day, when the town celebrates the return of the geese to Stoyer’s Dam. Apparently the so-called “Miracle of the Geese” is the second biggest event in the town, only surpassed by the raucous Burro Day in late September, when the burros finally chase the birds away.
As the large birds wing their way back to their summer home in “the little borough that could,” the town takes on a fiesta flair and visitors from all over the county, from all walks of life, gather together to witness this marvelous aviary wonder.

Who can forget the romantic Pennsylvania Dutch song, “Wenn die Gänse zum Schuylkill Hafen zurückgehen?” It was #1 on WPPA’s Hit Parade back in the 1950s for eight consecutive weeks.
It was the first 45 rpm that I purchased; now looking over my stock portfolio it was the best investment I ever made.
Yes, the return of our fine feathery friends has captured the imagination of hundreds; giving us all goose bumps. When I am asked to give an analogy for the sheer excitement of watching the birds dive bomb into town, I can only compare it the tingling feeling that I get sitting through the last two rounds of the Spelling Bee.

Spell that t-i-n-g-l-i-n-g. tingling.

After dropping off my kilts at the cleaners I planned to immediately head down to Stoyer’s Dam but two things stopped me. I no longer had my protective green plastic hat which would shield me from the large goose droppings. Secondly, Mammy called and said that she could not salvage the plastic green hats despite the tedious hours she spent on the task.
We would have to properly dispose of the plastic green hats. I told her that I would hurry home and help her determine if the dented hats were #1 PET plastic or #2 HDPE plastic so that the hats could be properly picked up on Recycling Day.
So I never did get to see the geese arrive back in Schuylkill Haven, but for the life of me I could not get that song out of my head. All during the Girardville Parade, while I stood hatless in my clean, crisp highlander kilts, I was haunted by the melody of the birds drowning out the tedious marching bands.

“Wenn die Schwalben zu Schuylkill Hafen zurückkommen
That' s der Tag, den Sie versprachen, zu mir zurückzukommen,
als Sie flüsterten, ‘Abschied’, zu Schuylkill Hafen
Twas der Tag, den die Schwalbe heraus zum Meer flog…”