Fat Friday
I was having lunch with the priest from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and explaining why I could not be a priest but that I may have to become a priest through a process of elimination. Other careers were not working out and I felt I lived a life on some nebulous level above the temporal ethos.
Hence I would have to take on the priesthood out of necessity even though my belief in the resurrection was not the concrete belief they would like me to have at the seminary. The priest laughed and told me there were trick questions that they asked at the seminary to determine the nature of
one's faith and if one gave the wrong answers, one was kicked out. Another career eliminated. But I had a kayak.
"It would be nice," the priest said, "to be represented at the Small Ships Review."
"I may be able to help you out." I said, "I could get my kayak in the water," (and be redeemed.)
"Hey!" The priest's eyes lit up. "I have a Ukrainian flag you could wave!"
"OK, let's do it," was my "can do" response.
We filled out the entry forms at a local eatery and I got a free T shirt.
The flag pole was assembled and I found myself at the staging area with the other floats. The Kayak was stuffed into the back of my shining Honda Fit and my "float" would be some statement about what can be fit into a Honda Fit. There were nice floats in the yard -- a crashed
spaceship, a large frog sculpted from green plastic barrels, a pirate ship, an awesome water lily, a mockup of a Huey helicopter and other creative entries including a "redneck yawt" where an inner tube was powered by an electric trolling motor. A little pavilion housed an ongoing party where free
beer was being served. I had a beer and another one --- not too many for driving a parade route.
The floats lined up for the land parade and a serious faced cop cruised slowly along the line up making sure that the drivers under the influence were not unduly influenced. The parade began
to move and I entered the parade route waving and smiling at the crowd that resembled the Roman mob. The participants in the float ahead of me were shaking up cans of pop then squirting each other with agitated soda in some pagan ritual associated with a particular rock and roll band they were imitating.
I saw the tattooed and demonic faced celebrants in the crowd cheering and yelling in front of the vacant store fronts and thought this was some class of sin in Dante's descent into Hell. There were the stone faced cops standing vastly outnumbered here and there glancing about with shocked worried
expressions of brothers' keepers considering how this whole affair could develop into some catastrophic riot which would mean the end of the world. The cops probably thought the end of the world had already come. They were priests of a different color --
the blue priests. Restraint prevailed.
We arrived at the water front and the arduous process of getting the parade floats to actually float now as the "small ships" was assisted by the high school football team. My job was easy -- getting the kayak into the water. I got the flag set up then
practiced waving it as I floated in an eddy. We got moving down the river and for all the world the mob was Roman jamming the bridge and river bank and I could have been cruising the Tiber waving a flag from the Transalpine Gaul judging from blank expressions on the hedonist faces that
stared at my craft.
But there was the priest waving wildly and focusing a massive camera lens on me. A splash went up next to my boat and I realized I was taking water balloon artillery fire. Exciting. I waved the Ukrainian flag bravely. Blue over yellow was bright in the sun -- sky over grain.
I waved the flag bravely floating toward the judging stand at the third bridge.
I was announced over the loudspeaker. "Ukraine on the Shenango!" I did not hear any applause and judging from the grim stares coming from behind some
sunglasses on the bridge I imagined some up there were vets who did not get the connection to "Moscow on the Hudson." I gave them a military salute and smiled. It was all for the priest anyway.
Emerging on the other side of the bridge there were serious splashes
around the bow of the boat. Then the cockpit received a hit. I was under fatal fire as the Bismarck in her final minutes. I dug the paddle in deep to increase speed. There was a sudden pain in my side as a water balloon exploded against my ribs with the force of about 40 lbs per square inch.
It hurt. I bore up though and increased speed as suddenly I felt as if I was hit in the head with a club. A water balloon slammed into my head as hundreds of voices released a collective exclamation of "ooooooh." I was hit bad and rowed away with a head ache still under my own power to
safety. Finally I learned what it was like to be in battle -- the rounds coming in, cruelly finding their mark and erasing all pretensions to immortality -- rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air. The veterans got their pound of flesh.
I was not through. Unexploded
water balloons floated in the river and I picked them up loading up my foredeck. I started my attack run rowing to flank speed toward the bridge. I stowed the paddle and reached for the balloons and let them have it. Rounds were coming my way as I launched my barrage. Hundreds
of voices cheered. I had my five minutes of fame. The parade was over.
The Ukrainian Orthodox priest and I carried the kayak stoically through the crowded fair grounds as if bearing a cross. I was hailed suddenly by a wide eyed black boy of about six
years. "Hey!" he said wide eyed, "you did a great job." Adulation. For me. I looked into his eyes speechless but managed saying, "thanks."
Then a fifty steps later I uttered a well worn observation.
"Thank God it's Friday."
Poetry by Peter J. Kautsky
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Written on 2009-06-30 at 23:44
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