I'm cruising down the Parkway on my way to work when I see it: the first of the white tents at the Open Space that signal the Cherry Festival's arrival.
Oh, I've known it was coming. Almost daily I've watched the city's transformation on my drive in, from the banners going up on the light posts along Grandview Parkway to the midway rides arriving at the big barn along Traverse Highway. Here at the paper, reporters have been working for weeks on stories for the festival tab.
Still, it's not until I prepare to turn into our Front Street parking lot that I know the festival is finally here. The chain that's used to discourage festival-goers from parking in our assigned spaces during the week is stretched tight across the front, forcing me to enter from the alley instead.
Like a lot of locals, I'm ambivalent about the festival, though I recognize its contribution to the city. I don't skip town to avoid it, but I don't schedule my vacation around it, either.
The sad truth is that I don't like cherries, except in pies. I hate crowds and I wilt like a plucked wildflower in temperatures above 80.
Yet there's something about festival week that makes my step a little lighter, especially in Blue Angels years. When I hear the jets on their practice flights directly over our office, I often stop what I'm doing to go out and watch. I plan at least one lunch around Gibby's fries. And while I don't necessarily wear red, I've been known to don a stretchy "crystal cherries" toe ring in a nod to the occasion.
Years back, my family and I volunteered with a nonprofit group at the beverage tent, then made a day out of the festival finale, beginning with the Cherry Royale Parade. Back then, the best seats in the house were on a colleague's Union Street porch, where family and friends gathered for an annual potluck and where the festival queen and her court always stopped for a spell.
When our lives took different paths and our colleague sold the house, we began to forgo the parade. Still, we'd make the drive in for the fireworks, arriving early to stake out a spot and then wandering the Open Space for dinner and the midway for a game of Whac-A-Mole or a ride on the Scrambler.
Our favorite festival memory is of the time the ride operator forgot about us while talking to a friend, and the ride went on and on ... and on. When he finally came to and stopped the thing, we hobbled off dizzy and dazed and a little bruised from slamming against each other.
Eventually my favorite event, the milk carton regatta, was replaced by the Ultimate Air Dogs competition. Other changes took place to keep up with the times. But the one constant is the festival itself. Like it or not, it's a tradition that's here to stay -- like pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving or caroling at Christmas.
And in an age when traditions are fading faster than newspapers, I'm glad there's one I can always count on.
Reach staff writer Marta Hepler Drahos at mdrahos@record-eagle.com.
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