Red Owl Kitchen

I live in a stereotypical  Small Town™. Everyone knows (or at least recognizes) everyone else, we smile and say hello to each other as we walk by, and we call our downtown area The Village Beautiful (no joke). As a teacher, I can’t go to the store without running into at least one parent of a student I’ve taught or am currently teaching, and I often run into my students biking or walking around with their friends when I’m out for a run. It’s a great place.

Along with all the craft fairs and bake sales that are hosted throughout the year by various churches and schools, my town also holds an annual holiday walk at the beginning of December. For those of you who don’t know what a holiday walk is, it’s basically a collection of winter themed events taking place on a main street in town throughout a day (or evening—some areas call it First Night). There’s usually caroling, cookie decorating, free cocoa, and so on. My particular town’s Holiday Walk starts with a 5k in the morning, and then progresses into the kids’ crafts, a few charity raffles, some food related events, and then finishes up with a costumed dog parade, and a reading of A Christmas Carol at one of the local restaurants. It’s always a good time.

This year, my mother drove up to go to the walk with me. As you may suspect, the dog parade is the highlight of the day. So, after puttering around the raffles in the early afternoon and checking out a soup tasting, we found our spot on the sidewalk and waited for the parade to begin. The dogs, as always, were magnificent. They were dressed up in ribbons, as elves, in reindeer antlers and in yarmulkes. My personal favorites were a St. Bernard pulling a small wheeled sleigh and a tiny Chihuahua dressed as Santa. However, our dog parade is all inclusive. So, along with the dogs were also a few miniature horses from the local farms, the school marching band, the local veterans, and Santa on a firetruck bringing up the rear.    

During the parade, it’s not unusual for the people marching to hand out candy or plastic necklaces to people watching from the sidewalk. So, sometime around half way through the parade, one of the kids marching with her dog handed me a candy cane.