Seaway Festival Parade

I’m 14, and standing on the curb of a street; there are many others with me. There is loud music playing. Suddenly, a very large spider, about the size of a basketball, comes swinging down out of nowhere on its string, and a man, seemingly controlling it, is laughing as I, and all the others, recoil in horror. A cannon goes off, stunning all, making babies cry, and pieces of candy spill onto the street at my feet.

A scene from a nightmare?

No, it was a typical Seaway Festival Parade in the ‘70s.

I can’t recall what group was on that float; I don’t think it was the Shriners; I recall that group with mini-bikes, riding them demonically up and down Ford St as the parade stopped momentarily, dodging and weaving with each other, middle-aged men with Fez hats on, smiling and having a great time. We boys on the sidelines wanted to do that, except most of us would have been trying to jump something with the mini-bikes, or would play Chicken with each other and inevitably end up crashing into each other, or wiping out several bystanders if we panicked at the last second. Mini-bikes - basically motorcycles for kids - were big back then, and quite a few of the guys had them. It might be a generic brand from Sears or Montgomery Wards, or if you were lucky, your parents got you a real name brand one, like a Honda 70, or the even bigger Kawasaki 90. They were dangerous - kinda - and we didn’t wear helmets back then, oh no - but damn, were they ever fun! Don’t really see them anymore, thanks to you kill-joy safety hawks, saving kids from brain injuries and all.

Marching bands would come from all over, from the small hamlets of nearby places like Brier Hill or Morristown, and Canada, which I recall being a few bagpipe bands, always a crowd favorite, and very loud. With bagpipe bands, when warming up in an enclosed auditorium, it’s often well advised to have a team of civil engineers come in the day after to inspect for acoustic damage, just to be sure no harm was wrought on the structure. Have you seen the ruins of castles in the highlands of Scotland? Yes, that was bagpipes that did that. Many of these bands would go on to compete in The Battle of the Drums a festival favorite held at the OFA football field.

The handlers of the bands were often interesting to watch, as they supported the performers, watching for kids about to pass out as they wore those hot uniforms with unnaturally large hats on a hot summer day, it being a pseudo-Bataan Death March for some of the less physically fit kids. They would pull supply wagons with them that would have water, and musical instrument supplies, like drumsticks for those that broke or reeds for woodwinds.

The hometown favorite, the Roethel's Executives & The Chaparrelles was always anticipated and wildly welcomed, with their typical band uniforms, the feather-plumed hats, boots, and short skirts.

The parade, to me, was always the best part of the whole week of the Seaway Festival. The sidewalk was several people deep up and down Ford St, from where they started - somewhere down by Eddy’s Market, as I recall, to where they finally stopped, around Riverview Tower. The most ardent viewers would put out their lawn chairs and mark “their” spots in some great locations - in front of their own home, or a friend’s. Some homes with porches would have people sitting on either the porch itself or its roof, having climbed out a second-story window. People would be cooking in their yards, having a party of barbecue grilled chicken with sides like potato salad, and of course, beer. My uncle Bob would park his pickup in the parking lot of Phillip’s Diner the day before, and several of us would have a great place to watch the parade, up a few feet from the ground; Aunt Marilyn sat in her lawn chair, and my cousins would be with her. It was a prime spot,  near city hall where the reviewing stand would be, and some local announcer - typically from WSLB - would be calling out the parade through loudspeakers placed up and down the long route, reciting where the band was from, a short factoid about the band or float. The floats would sport their award on poster board - “Mayor’s Award”, “Seaway Festival Award” and so on.

Hawkers would be going up and down the parade route, having waited for this big day, pushing their carts full of toys right in front of kids, selling balloons on a stick, squeaky toy trumpets, or those unnamed plastic tube things you’d swirl around, which would make a weird sound. You were certain to shoot the parents of those kids a dirty look after about an hour of that noise standing next to you, and wanting to strangle the hawker. Cotton candy and popcorn were also available and big sellers. Later on, during the ‘80s, they’d be selling ring necklaces that glowed or were LED-powered.

We kids, in wolf-like packs, would walk up and down Ford Street to see, and be seen, fighting through the crowds, and just glancing at the parade as we were either getting through it quicker or keeping up with it, depending on which way we were going. If you were lucky, you didn’t trip on one of the uneven sidewalk slabs the ‘burg is world renowned for - they were so bad in some places, they could trip up tanks.

Other attractions included characters on stilts, and classic cars with dignitaries such as the mayor, or local dairy princess sitting on the top of the back seat of a convertible. What exactly were the responsibilities of a dairy princess, anyway? Did they visit sick cows on the farm? Attend milk awareness galas? Raise funds to help poorer cows in neighboring counties? We never found out. They knew the stiff arm side-to-side queen wave, that was certain.

Floats were plenty, and some were incredibly well done, obviously having taken hundreds of man-hours to create, from local churches, nursing homes, or clubs like Rotary or the Moose Lodge. They looked like they were motorized art tableaus going by, and I would look for the guy trying to peer out through slits covering the tow motor he was using. He had to be careful about starting and stopping, as the lives of those on the float depended on it, lest they be thrown off the thing.

Military contingents of vets from the Vietnam War, Korean, or even WWII would march by, colors flying, still in uniform and trying to be as in step as possible with each other. They would get applause as they went by, and deservedly so. Us boys secretly hoped one of them would have a bazooka or mortar they might let off during their display, but as far as anyone knows it never happened.

Fire departments, with their polished pumpers and ladder trucks, would go by, occasionally honking or lighting up their sirens, and people would be so startled, they’d jump out of their old folding chairs - the kind with the worn strap webbing - and the strap webbing, after seeing years of wear, would finally give way as the lady plopped back down and she’d go right through it, her bottom firmly wedged into the aluminum frame, old men next to them trying to do a recovery of the body.

The city highway trucks, all polished up and looking their best, made the scene. The guys would often have their kids with them, and you could see them wave and try to talk to people they knew in the crowd.

After the parade passed by, and was wrapping up - the police cars following up the rear was the undeniable signal - people would start folding up their lawn chairs, and head down the side street to their cars - often parked as far as a quarter-mile away - and try to navigate the busiest traffic day in the Ogdensburg year. Clean-up began very shortly after, and band members, in their uniforms, now unbuttoned to try to cool off, could be seen trying to find their families in the crowd, or hopping onto their school buses headed back to their hometowns.

Such it was, another fun and boisterous parade of the annual Seaway Festival, still remembered by this guy to this day.

The film you see here is from my uncle, Paul Morley. It was taken in the early ‘70s from what I can tell. I have the position of his camera being in front of what is now the firehouse on Ford St. The brick home you see is 715. I've stabilized it, and it has also been sharpened and the saturation enhanced. There was no audio track to the original movie; I added one in for further enjoyment.

https://youtu.be/IJwSwkBMuHA?si=HFoFSjmr2e8D01Gl