Small Towns
One of my favorite things about the
4th of July in the USA is small town parades.
Everyone has a part, everyone has a chance to feel special, and
everyone’s gifts are appreciated.
One
year I went with a friend to a parade in her hometown. Old vehicles lead the way with mustangs,
corvettes, model Ts, farm tractors and vintage fire trucks. There were mostly men driving and they smiled
and waved and gunned their engines. The
parade continued with school bands, VWF groups, Boy Scout and Girl Scout
troops, SPCA dogs, and truck drawn floats.
Bringing up the rear of the parade was a horse contingency, which was a
good place to put the horses. As I waved
to the men riding the horses, I did a double take; they were the same men that
were driving the cars at the beginning of the parade. I smiled and waved all the harder.
I learned some things that day: sometime in
life we have more than one role to play and each role is important; in big
events, it is the little people that make things happen; and when you smile and
wave there is a good chance those around you will smile and wave back.
What do you enjoy about about your hometown? Can you fashion a story around it? Can it be your setting? The people your characters?
Martha Swirzinski, M. A.
www.MovementPlus.com
www.WholeChildPublishing.com
5 comments:
Martha, I'm a native New Yorker, born and raised in Manhattan. Hardly the small town you picture. But my father had a house in Connecticut, on a lake, and it became the setting for a children's book.
I always love to read the story behind the story. Why an author picked the setting, character or names. One children's author always put his children's names in each of his drawings. My girls loved his books for this reason. They loved to try and find the names.
I also love to discover the story behind the story. As a Chicagoan, snowy winters are common and find their way into my picture books.
Martha, what a wonderful idea that I had not considered. Thank-you for sharing!
Kathy
Martha, interesting idea. Places, including your home town, can certainly lend themselves to creating a story around. And, what a great 4th of July story!
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