We moved onto our street ten years ago, and one of the first interactions we had with our new neighbours (after the snow finally melted and people emerged from hibernation) was a flyer saying that the Victoria Day weekend was coming up and that meant that the annual street-wide garage sale and fireworks display were upon us. The flyer said that Mark would be around to collect $25 from each house for the fireworks, and wanting to fit in, of course we paid. The show happened in the middle of the court, with this Mark fellow doing all the work, and even though it was a a totally amateurish display, the girls liked it and we enjoyed sitting out front with our new neighbours. This was actually the first time we met the guy, Les, on our right -- he roared up in his pickup, hastily parked in front of his house, came striding over to shake Dave's hand and then pulled a half empty beer out of his inner jacket pocket, took a swig, then offered an unopened beer from his other pocket to Dave. What a strange man Les was.
This went on every year (with the garage sale fading away), and as we began to interact with some of these people more and more, we started to call this Mark "The Mayor" -- he totally believed that he was in charge of the whole street. When Mike and Susie first moved in on our left -- into a house with an insanely long driveway -- Susie parked her school bus there (and I could only assume that they had bought that house especially for that driveway). Within a week, Mark went door-to-door with a petition, trying to get the neighbours to agree that we didn't want a big yellow bus parked in a private driveway on our street. I didn't sign that petition -- especially because, with the shape of our court, there's no way Mark could even see that bus from his house -- but it was, technically, a bylaw violation, and Susie was forced to give up the bus and the job.
In the summer of 2012, one of the girls from our street went to London to participate as a gymnast in the Olympics, and the week before she left, Mark held a goodbye party for her in his back yard. Now, he was the girl's next door neighbour, but she was also a classmate of Kennedy's since kindergarten, so his special claim to intimacy -- I remember the first time I saw Maddy doing flips on the front grass and just knew she had something special -- was slightly galling. That party was so much about Mark and his posturing and speechifying, but, that's The Mayor for you. (It was also at this party that Dave was standing with a couple of the men from the street, including Les, and as they started to make some tasteless and racist remarks, Dave didn't figure he needed to get any closer to these jerks).
Then last spring, as Mark was doing something in his front yard, a kid from some different street came buzzing up the sidewalk on one of those pocket bikes, and as the kid flew around the circle, Mark got madder and madder, and when the kid finally passed in front of Mark's own house, Mark stepped forward, grabbed the kid by the scruff of his shirt, and the bike went skittering down the sidewalk, the kid thumping hard onto his bum. The Mayor had zero regrets, standing there lecturing the kid about the dangers and illegality of riding a motorised vehicle on the sidewalks, and then he went back to his fiddling as the kid limped home, pushing his busted machine. Within a short while, a pickup truck screeched to a halt in front of Mark's house, four big dudes got out, they identified themselves as the kid's uncles and wanted to know what Mark was going to do about the broken bike. At this point, another neighbour who is a cop (forever after known as "The Sheriff") went running over and was able to convince the uncles not to press charges if Mark paid for the bike. I think they go for less than a hundred dollars, but I heard that The Mayor ponied up $500 and the scary dudes went away. As Victoria Day approached last year, however, Mark decided to lay low: There was no flyer, and ultimately, no fireworks display (although Dave and Ken both put in $100 and set some off in the schoolyard behind us for our own kids).
Ever since Ken and his family moved here three years ago, he has worried himself over what a standoffish street this is, and thinking that these fireworks were the only chance to get people out talking to each other, he was able to convince Dave that they should stage a coup and take it on themselves. They started by talking to Mark -- wanting to make sure there wouldn't be any hard feelings -- and he seemed relieved to pass on the mantle along with his expertise about who likes to complain about the dangers and who probably won't contribute any money. I was so skeptical, thinking that people were probably happy to say goodbye to the noise and the fuss and the threat of damage to cars and roofs, but Ken made up a flyer and his kids delivered them. To my great surprise, every house on the street paid to see the fireworks come back, and the few people who brought the money to me personally were excited and friendly. One woman who came said, "When the fireworks started twenty years ago, my kids were this little, and this year, my son is going to bring our grandkids to watch". Imagine that.
Ken had devised an upgrade, too, and promised a barbecue in the flyer; he was in charge of the hot dogs and pop. Dave went to get the fireworks, and with four families (including The Mayor's) chipping in $100, he had an $800 budget; enough money to make "eyeballs bleed" according to the salesman in the fireworks trailer.
Kyler came up from Burlington with his family, Mallory invited a bunch of her friends to come and watch, Lolo had invited Beth and Gord and their kids -- there were plenty of familiar faces, but also all these neighbours that we never get to talk to. Ken manned the grill, but when he left and I got to serve, Mark himself came and said, "Why did I never think of a barbecue? This is great!" Another woman, when Mark was out of earshot, told me, "This is so much better than anything the Beadles ever did!" I smiled, but thought she said "The Beatles" and thought that was a very strange comment until I remembered that "Beadle" is The Mayor's last name. As Mark was eating his third or so hot dog, I heard him on the lawn telling someone about the great Olympic sendoff party he had hosted for Maddy -- ah, glory days for The Mayor, indeed.
Kennedy was conscripted to hand out 100 glowsticks and then to light the sparklers for the little kids. And then the show began. Every single one of the fireworks that Dave had been sold was a huge and high flying explosion -- this was obviously a show of a different order than had ever been seen before on our little street -- and with the expanded budget, the display lasted for nearly a half an hour, with a massively impressive finale. Lolo played DJ, which probably didn't travel too far over the noise of the fireworks themselves, but from where I sat, it was a helluva show.
Of course, afterwards, The Mayor couldn't help but stick his nose in, "We should have the garage sale again next year", he said. "The barbecue was great, but maybe next year we could have a potluck, with everyone standing out in their driveways offering some specialty," he said. "It could be dinner, not just a snack," he said. But his day is done. There's a new mayor in town, Mark.
