In Stephen Leacock’s ‘Mariposa’, and  Edith Wharton’s ‘age of innocence’, before madmen unleashed the dogs of war and temperance tamed the roaring twenties, there was this: the easy adagio of a summer’s evening spent beneath the beaming grin of a big saucer- moon hung low in the front harbour’s hazy twilight sky; the gentle billow of luminous  backlit sails; the gilded lapping oars of row boats carrying courting couples, cutting soft folds in the shimmering satin water, pulling them away from shore towards a private reverie. 

 

Picture bouncing ringlets caught loosely in velvet ribbon, white pinafores, starched petticoats and ruffled parasols; tweed plus-fours and newsboy caps; smart linen suits and jaunty straw boaters; bristling mustaches and barber shop gossip; strawberry socials and tea in dainty china cups.

 

Did you know that a marching band paraded down Chester Basin’s main street every Sunday? Imagine that, the long sentence of a six-day work week punctuated by John Philip Sousa.

 

Still, on Sundays during summer evenings the gentle folk of Chester gather around the bandstand listening in a thrall of contented silence  to the rippling rhythms of Ragtime, each of them transported to their own past-perfect, Rockwell-imagined world.

#ChesterNovaScotia #SeasideSummerMemory #MarchingBandBandstands #Rockwellpast