{"id":2747,"date":"2007-07-04T02:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-04T06:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2007\/07\/old-fashioned-fourth\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:00:59","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:00:59","slug":"old-fashioned-fourth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2007\/07\/old-fashioned-fourth\/","title":{"rendered":"An Old-Fashioned Fourth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wellfleet<\/a><\/p>\n

Our town does not have a 4th of July parade; we do our parading on
\nMemorial Day<\/a>. It was the same in the village<\/a> where I grew up, so it was with great excitement that when I was six we started spending our summers – or at least the beginning of July – at Wellfleet, Massachusetts<\/a>, on Cape Cod<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Wellfleet parade was – and is<\/a> – a fully civic affair, with all walks of townfolk involved. Floats can be patriotic<\/a>, political<\/a>, moral<\/a>, religious<\/a> or promotions for town businesses, from restaurants<\/a> to banks<\/a>. The selectmen<\/a> always had a float and even summerfolk<\/a> join in, fully aware that they’re both a nuisance<\/a> and a foundation of town’s economy. Bunting<\/a> abounded on Main Street buildings, and horses<\/a> led the parade, followed by antique cars<\/a> – even a Stanley Steamer<\/a>. Wellfleet claims its founding as 1620<\/a>, so Pilgrim hats<\/a> are always in fashion<\/a>. It’s a shellfish town, embodied by this oysterman<\/a> who makes popular perennial appearances<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People climb to the rooftops<\/a> to watch the marching bands<\/a>, and in earlier days soldiers<\/a> from the nearby National Guard camp joined the line of march. Sometimes the spectators’ cars<\/a> were more interesting than those in the parade<\/a>. That night, there were fireworks over the harbor<\/a>, not always done these days, I’m told. One tradition that’s long gone is the bonfire on the evening before. Townfolk spent weeks building a tower of railroad ties<\/a>, filling it with tires and topping it off with an old outhouse. It lit up the sky, and burned for days. Today the EPA would put a stop to it, but Wellfleeters ceased the tradition long ago, when they ran out of outhouses<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our town does not have a 4th of July parade; we do our parading on Memorial Day. It was the same in the village where I grew up, so it was with great excitement that when I was six we started spending our summers – or at least the beginning of July – at Wellfleet,….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2747"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3327,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions\/3327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}