July 4th Parade Prequel

By July 2, 2011, many homeowners were busy giving the finishing touches to the exterior of their homes and even doing some last-minute landscaping in preparation for the throngs of spectators who would be making their yearly pilgrimage from near and far to Riverton’s Main Street for its celebrated annual July Fourth parade.

It seems that everyone has their own July Fourth family rituals and cherished memories of the “good ol’ days” whether they be 8 years ago or 80. Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer, Jan Hefler, profiled the swirl of activity surrounding one porch party and wrote a story which could probably be repeated in kind, if not in degree, on quite a few other porches. Here is the link for Jan Hefler’s story.

Jeannie O’Sullivan, writing for the Burlington County Times, whom I have cited here before, reminds us that memories and rituals regarding Riverton’s July Fourth celebrations are no less vivid for out-of-towners (like myself) whose vantage point for watching the parade has varied from curbside to other people’s porches. Here is the link for Jeannie O’Sullivan’s story.

My first memories of Riverton are the times when my grandparents brought my brother, mother, and me to witness the parade and the fireworks that followed at the riverbank. That fifty year old memory is dwarfed by the recollections of many others who can mark so many personal milestones by the number of parades that they have seen pass by their view.

Reviving an HSR tradition which apparently had not been done since 2004, Gerald Weaber and I handed out several hundred July Fourth Palm Cards during the parade and during the raft races. I confess that I largely plagiarized bits from previous series of palm cards and hastily printed them up the night before. Readers, in your spare time, please check your old July 4^th palm cards against these dates: 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, and send me a scan of any more dates that you have. I would very much like to document what has already been done other years.

Maribeth Paige Shaffer was one of the people to whom I distributed the new cards.  She kindly responded to my request to send photos of the raft race to post. Thank you, Ms. Shaffer for the brilliant photographs .

 

 

There will be more posts and photos forthcoming on the subject of Riverton’s July Fourths, past and present. In the meantime, if you care to tell a bit of your story here, please leave a comment, or contact me. John McCormick, Gaslight News editor