Speaker 1: Hullo. I'm moalcan stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's easy to lose track of unusual things
Speaker 2: when you've lived among them for years, so often they
Speaker 2: blend into the general tapestry of habit and routine. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's why the quirks of Festival Street had gone unremarked
Speaker 2: for so long, until I found myself, months into retirement,
Speaker 2: standing once again in the back room of Winslow Harbor
Speaker 2: Post sleeves rolled up elbow deep in a spill of
Speaker 2: packages and letters marked for my old route. I'd agreed
Speaker 2: to help Hazel, who still volunteers on Mondays. Her hands
Speaker 2: have never liked the sorting machine, and besides, I'd missed
Speaker 2: the talk and the smell of paper and glue, so
Speaker 2: different from the clean salt air just outside. The post
Speaker 2: office is never quiet in August. All morning we shuffled
Speaker 2: piles and swapped stories, familiar work made new by the
Speaker 2: sense I was a guest these days, not the official postman,
Speaker 2: and it would have faded to nothing, just another pleasant
Speaker 2: morning if my old habit from decades on the route
Speaker 2: hadn't asserted itself a habit of scrutiny of habitual noticing.
Speaker 2: I caught it in something small, as always, a bundle
Speaker 2: of stamps fresh from the sort. One letter for nineteen
Speaker 2: Shipwatch Lane, another for eight Festival Street. Both slid into
Speaker 2: the same outgoing tray dropped into the blue box just
Speaker 2: across from the bakery. But when I turned them over
Speaker 2: for final tagging, I noticed something. The Shipwatch Lane postmark
Speaker 2: blared its date in upright digital print, August fifteen. The
Speaker 2: Festival Street letter, same block, same hour, even the same
Speaker 2: familiar handwriting from old missus Carney Bore August twelve, three
Speaker 2: days prior. Curious, I flipped back through the day's Festival
Speaker 2: Street stack. Another oddity a package postmarked August twenty one,
Speaker 2: to day being the fifteenth inside some child's lumpy artwork,
Speaker 2: addressed cheerfully to Grandad at the clock shop. I must
Speaker 2: have frowned, because Hazel wandered over, wiping her hands on
Speaker 2: a tissue. You still at it, she joked, you'd think
Speaker 2: you were getting paid. I showed her the mismatched post marks,
Speaker 2: my own voice caught between amusement and mild consternation. Have
Speaker 2: you seen this? They're all jumbled up? Look shipwatch Lane,
Speaker 2: right date, Festival Street all over the calendar. Hazel barely shrugged,
Speaker 2: as if I'd pointed out that the bakery switched to
Speaker 2: strawberry jam after the lunch rush. That's just Festival Street.
Speaker 2: Jackson always been a little off, hasn't it. I don't
Speaker 2: pay it much mind. I must have looked unconvinced, because
Speaker 2: she gave my arm a gentle slap, the way you
Speaker 2: do when someone's missing the humor in things. Ask any
Speaker 2: one around here, they'll only tell you that's Festival Street
Speaker 2: for you. Now, help me get the magazine stacked, if
Speaker 2: you please. We can't hold up missus Pike getting her
Speaker 2: gardening digest. But it sat with me, that subtle wrongness.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like the classic postal hiccup, a mist barcoed
Speaker 2: a rain smudged sticker. It was odd in just one direction,
Speaker 2: affecting exactly one stretch every letter and package for those
Speaker 2: ten houses and handful of shops. It had a pattern,
Speaker 2: I felt, if only I could get the angle right
Speaker 2: to see it. Later, at the general Store, I tried
Speaker 2: out my observation on Marv, who runs the place most afternoons.
Speaker 2: He grunted as I described the mismatched postmarks and simply
Speaker 2: mirrored Hazel's shrug. Just Festival Street. Suppose they are always
Speaker 2: ahead or behind us never bothered me. If they want trouble,
Speaker 2: they'll let you know. He seemed more interested in my
Speaker 2: opinion of the new cheddar Batch conversation, pivoting to safe
Speaker 2: local ground. Yet I felt, for the first time in
Speaker 2: a while the itch that used to live in my
Speaker 2: hands for riddling out, stray a dress and missing parcels,
Speaker 2: a curiosity that wouldn't be shrugged off, no matter how
Speaker 2: easily carried away in grocery chatter. I walked back to
Speaker 2: my friend George's house that afternoon, with my ears pricked
Speaker 2: for other explanations. The afternoon sun striped Festival Street in gold.
Speaker 2: Children dove tilled past on bikes, The bakery's bell chimed faintly,
Speaker 2: and in the window of Lelen's Antiques I caught a
Speaker 2: shimmer of glass and copper. Everything looked on the surface
Speaker 2: as it always had. But why Festival Street, Why only hear?
Speaker 2: And if every one said it was normal, why did
Speaker 2: the peculiarity nag at me now sharper than ever, as
Speaker 2: if the ordinary shapes of things could no longer quite
Speaker 2: cover it on Festival Street. You're forgiven for thinking you're
Speaker 2: in the pages of an especially detailed story book, or
Speaker 2: perhaps in the slow down world of a painting. It
Speaker 2: spills along the southwestern edge of Winslow Harbor, really more
Speaker 2: of a lane than a street. Despite its festive name,
Speaker 2: marbled in old brick, laced with old white trim, seaward
Speaker 2: facing windows slanting to catch every stray glimmer of late
Speaker 2: summer light. I found myself following familiar rhythms the rest
Speaker 2: of that first week. Back morning coffee under the striped
Speaker 2: awning of Pike's Bakery, a slow stroll along the shop fronts,
Speaker 2: the tang of salt and bread and engine oil carried
Speaker 2: inland on an easy breeze. The town at large moves gently,
Speaker 2: particularly in August, when the fishing boats return yellowed and battered,
Speaker 2: and the townsfolk, those who don't have to rise with
Speaker 2: the tides, let themselves dawdle by the flower market or
Speaker 2: paws chatting over newspaper stands before drifting down to the
Speaker 2: Harbor Square. Festival Street is the heart of this choreography.
Speaker 2: Old Missus Pike always has her doors open by seven,
Speaker 2: the first tray of cinnamon rolls fogging her window's most mornings.
Speaker 2: Mister Lellon's antiques keep their clock pendulums swinging from hooks
Speaker 2: in the dim oaky interior, tik toking in a subtle,
Speaker 2: many voiced percussion. Hazel, my occasional co conspirator in mail
Speaker 2: order and crossword puzzles, slips through the route twice daily,
Speaker 2: a wool cardigan trailing after her like a second pet.
Speaker 2: At the end of the street sits George's shop, a cluttered,
Speaker 2: inviting tinker's den of clocks, watches, springs, and bits of
Speaker 2: world weary machinery. George and I have been friends since
Speaker 2: our twenties. He's the youngest son of an old local
Speaker 2: family and can tell you which house creaks in the
Speaker 2: wind and which shops close for what fishing holidays. The
Speaker 2: man is broad faced, even tempered, with delicately inksmudged hands.
Speaker 2: He prides himself on making things right, by which he
Speaker 2: means restoring the fabled clock at the Harbor Green with
Speaker 2: a patient's few could rival. Since I've stepped down from
Speaker 2: my post rounds, George insists I have to learn to
Speaker 2: move like a civilian. I suspect that's his way of
Speaker 2: giving himself license to close up early for a stroll
Speaker 2: or a cup of Despite the rhythms and the old friendships,
Speaker 2: I felt myself drifting off tempo that week. Twice I
Speaker 2: crossed the street and realized I deep past a shop
Speaker 2: that should have been open. Once. I saw a next
Speaker 2: Saturday's sail sign in Lelon's window, but the date underneath
Speaker 2: was two days in the future, while the bakery's window
Speaker 2: advertised a Saturday bonanza for the following week, complete with
Speaker 2: a doodle of Missus Pike herself balancing tea cakes. I
Speaker 2: asked George about this over a late lunch. Why do
Speaker 2: all the flyers have different Saturdays? I asked, Half the
Speaker 2: time there's a poster for something that already happened and
Speaker 2: another for something everyone else thinks is next week. He shrugged,
Speaker 2: wiping grease off his hands. Shopkeeper's prerogative, that is, festival
Speaker 2: streets always race to its own clock. You get used
Speaker 2: to it, doesn't it get messy? I pressed, never stopped
Speaker 2: anyone buying a blueberry pie or a clock repair his eyes, twinker,
Speaker 2: but he didn't offer more. Keeps you guessing, though festival
Speaker 2: comes when it likes. In truth, the wider village runs
Speaker 2: on a rhythm as dependable as the tides, but Festival
Speaker 2: Street just ten buildings shoulder to shoulder drift somewhere between.
Speaker 2: There's an anticipation in the air the build up to
Speaker 2: Summer Day's festival, a sort of home grown carnival and
Speaker 2: community reunion, with banners, music, pie contests and the annual
Speaker 2: parade of antique fishing lures. The date shouted from every
Speaker 2: roof top in the Harbor Square, A lines on the
Speaker 2: calendar for all but this one's stretch. You'd think such
Speaker 2: a visible quirk would breed confusion, or at least mild aggravation,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't. Most treat it like a cousin's strange
Speaker 2: hair cut, hardly worth a fuss. I began to look harder,
Speaker 2: charting shop hours and market days, finding small signs of syncopation.
Speaker 2: Lelon's shop would close for a private inventory on a
Speaker 2: day he called Thursday, though the rest of the street
Speaker 2: declared Wednesday. Missus Pike insisted for her a festival falls
Speaker 2: twice in August. While the grosser across the square marks
Speaker 2: at once always the last Saturday, it was never disruptive,
Speaker 2: simply a half beat out of step, echoing the main town,
Speaker 2: yet humming with its own faintly mysterious temper. I had
Speaker 2: learned over decades to expect a bit of creative practicality
Speaker 2: on Festival Street, shop keeper's missing appointments, the calender never
Speaker 2: quite lining up, but none of it had ever struck
Speaker 2: me as anything but local color. Now, with more time
Speaker 2: to notice, the pattern pressed in at the edges of
Speaker 2: my understanding, teasing something deeper than mere eccentricity. It was
Speaker 2: a Thursday when the contradictions sharpened from background noise to
Speaker 2: impossible melody. I was headed to Pike's Bakery, birthday card
Speaker 2: in hand for Missus Pike, her birthday given in every
Speaker 2: register and the town's own public calendar as August eighteen.
Speaker 2: The store front was a blaze streamers of yellow crape
Speaker 2: hand letters reading congratulations, and the front case packed with
Speaker 2: little cakes iced with Marsapan roses. Happy Birthday, I announced
Speaker 2: as I entered, slipping the card onto the pile beside
Speaker 2: the register. Missus Pike beamed, but gave a little shake
Speaker 2: of her graying curls. Goodness, Jackson, you're a deer, but
Speaker 2: it's not my birthday to day. It's our anniversary fourteen
Speaker 2: wonderful years. Feel free to sample any cake you like.
Speaker 2: We always do an extra batch for the anniversary. I blinked, confused.
Speaker 2: Her anniversary was, according to town law, September. And besides,
Speaker 2: the card I just bought was the only one in line.
Speaker 2: But your family and the register say the eighteenth, Or
Speaker 2: am I a week early? She laughed, not unkindly, patting
Speaker 2: my hand over the bakery case. Oh, we celebrate things
Speaker 2: as they come, Jackson. Around here, a milestone finds you
Speaker 2: when it's ready. She glanced up at a pencil written
Speaker 2: sign above the counter, Anniversary week a U G twelve
Speaker 2: eighteen free tea for all. I let myself be steered
Speaker 2: toward a sticky bun and made for the door card unrequired.
Speaker 2: When I caught sight of Elsie across the street rolling
Speaker 2: buckets of peonies into the flower shop ready for tomorrow's festival,
Speaker 2: she called, still time to order a garland. If you
Speaker 2: hurry tomorrow, I echoed, shaw first festival of the season.
Speaker 2: She looked at me as if I had asked whether
Speaker 2: the sky would turn blue in daylight. Across town at
Speaker 2: the Harbor Office, the official festival date, posted in block letters,
Speaker 2: was listed as August twenty two. The schedule etched in
Speaker 2: my bones after years of postal deliveries said the same thing, annual, immovable,
Speaker 2: but on Festival Street. To morrow apparently was as likely
Speaker 2: a first festival as any. I cut back past George
Speaker 2: s seeing him outside tinkering with a bent alarm clock.
Speaker 2: He greeted me with a sideway's grin. Catch any festival
Speaker 2: fever yet, he asked, sliding a screwdriver behind his ear.
Speaker 2: I've missed the first one, apparently. Elsie says it was
Speaker 2: yesterday at the hardware store. Thought they were waiting for
Speaker 2: the parade next week. George shrugged, as if this were
Speaker 2: perfectly reasonable. They had music, Hazel brought a lemon tart.
Speaker 2: Old man morely played the sore. It was a festival
Speaker 2: for them, might be one to morrow too. Never know
Speaker 2: which you'll get. So are you celebrating tomorrow or is
Speaker 2: it already done? I pressed, he laughed, The sound rolling
Speaker 2: like marbles in an old jar. Why not celebrate again?
Speaker 2: Makes the weak lighter when there's music two days in
Speaker 2: a row. By now I had an armful of contradictory
Speaker 2: dates and recollections, Missus Pike's anniversary, the flower Shop's festival,
Speaker 2: George attending yet another version yesterday, each shop with a
Speaker 2: different memory or plan, each eye twinkling, as if the
Speaker 2: perpetual misalignment was not an error, but a kind of
Speaker 2: shared joke. Deeper and more settled than I could reach.
Speaker 2: It was no longer an idle oddity of mail or fliers,
Speaker 2: but a strand of culture woven into every household. Walking home,
Speaker 2: I passed Hazel setting up her sandwich board for Saturday's market.
Speaker 2: The date was half smudged in chalk, the month almost illegible,
Speaker 2: beneath a smear of rain. I stopped, Hazel, what day
Speaker 2: is the festival anyway? Seems everyone on this side of
Speaker 2: town's got a different answer. She set down her brush,
Speaker 2: gazed up at the brightening sky. Whenever a neighbor needs company.
Speaker 2: I suppose you should try joining all of them, Jackson,
Speaker 2: see which suits you best. She meant it too. The
Speaker 2: contradiction was so gentle, so untroubled, that my curiosity only deepened.
Speaker 2: I needed to know not just why these different dates persisted,
Speaker 2: but how how one street, a dozen names could all
Speaker 2: remember the same moments, festivals, anniversaries, birthdays on utterly different days,
Speaker 2: and why, perhaps most hauntingly, nobody else found anything unsettling
Speaker 2: about it at all. No good mystery can be solved
Speaker 2: without getting one's hands dirty. I dug in that week
Speaker 2: notebook in pocket, determined to spot the scene between memory
Speaker 2: and mistake. Festival Street did not disappoint mondays. I noted
Speaker 2: the bakery closed just after lunch, a sign promising back
Speaker 2: soon gone to bake rowdy cakes for Saturday. Yet on
Speaker 2: the same day the hardware store hosted a half dozen
Speaker 2: neighbors over for early festival pie. If I asked in passing,
Speaker 2: when's the big day? Missus Pike set her date a
Speaker 2: full three days after leland S. While Leland insisted, with
Speaker 2: grandfatherly certainty, that the festival already came and went, thank
Speaker 2: you very much, last Thursday. He even described the event
Speaker 2: the song the school children sang the second vers as
Speaker 2: always off key, the color of the bunting, the flavor
Speaker 2: of the special bread details so vivid. I half suspected
Speaker 2: he simply enjoyed the telling. In my growing notebook, I
Speaker 2: charted the hours as best I could Bakery festival prep
Speaker 2: on Monday, hardware store festival witnessed last Thursday, Lelon's Festival
Speaker 2: Anniversary Thursday, Flower Shop Festival tomorrow, no date given. I
Speaker 2: would pass the grocery and find an unassuming flier for
Speaker 2: next Saturday's mega sale. Dates scrawled as the twenty first,
Speaker 2: even though today was the fifteenth, and another shop insisted
Speaker 2: on the eighteenth. And yet everyone, truly everyone on the
Speaker 2: street spoke with absolute confidence about their own version. Determined
Speaker 2: not to be out maneuvered, I began quietly cross checking memories.
Speaker 2: At Hazel's suggestion, I casually interviewed neighbors over coffee or
Speaker 2: in the shade outside the post office. Do you recall
Speaker 2: I asked whether the first Summer Day's festival was this
Speaker 2: past Saturday or the one coming up. Hazel, always cheerful,
Speaker 2: waved her hand. Last week for sure, I brought my
Speaker 2: walnut cake, but the rain came early. Or was that
Speaker 2: for the spring festival? Either way, I remember sitting with
Speaker 2: you right here and watching Elsie's grandchildren chase balloons. Mister
Speaker 2: Leland counted without irony, the festival's next week, you can
Speaker 2: mark it. My father always said, never put up bunting
Speaker 2: before the twenty first, or you'll risk a week of
Speaker 2: bad luck. I tested their recollections, sometimes pressing gently. Were
Speaker 2: you at the festival? When the parade passed by last Saturday?
Speaker 2: I thought I saw you with a prize ribbon. He
Speaker 2: would shake his head, brow furrowing in honest confusion. Couldn't
Speaker 2: have been last Saturday. I was in Rockport for my
Speaker 2: sister's birthday. Even the younger residence joined in. Elsie's daughter,
Speaker 2: flicking petals from her hands, assured me she'd been at
Speaker 2: a parade last week, but could not swear whether it
Speaker 2: had been an official festival or something the hardware store
Speaker 2: had dreamed up. Physical evidence helped. Little fliers stayed up
Speaker 2: in windows long past their dates. The bakery listed anniversary
Speaker 2: treats August ten, seventeen, while the calendar in the hardware
Speaker 2: shop displayed a garish circle over the fourteenth. If I
Speaker 2: confronted them with the discrepancy but Leland says it was Thursday,
Speaker 2: they shrugged, smiled, and said, so many festivals, Jackson, You
Speaker 2: can count them or just join in out of town.
Speaker 2: Things retained normality, Shops kept calendar time, mail came as expected,
Speaker 2: nobody seemed out of sink. But Festival Street unraveled. The
Speaker 2: calendar by consensus, each recounting their festival, each memory as
Speaker 2: vivid as the next, but never overlapping. I gained a
Speaker 2: companion in my confusion, the mail carrier who'd taken over
Speaker 2: my old route, an eager, red cheeked fellow named Brian.
Speaker 2: I caught him at lunch in the cafe and asked,
Speaker 2: point blank, you ever get odd dates when delivering to
Speaker 2: Festival Street? He snorted, eyes rolling, You have no idea.
Speaker 2: I delivered last week's circular to the bakery, and then
Speaker 2: two mornings later, missus Pike called me back, said I'd
Speaker 2: missed it, handed me the exact same flier, different date.
Speaker 2: He scratched his head, went along with it, because I mean,
Speaker 2: who argues with someone offering you free tea? At nine
Speaker 2: in the morning, we sat together pondering, is it just confusion?
Speaker 2: He asked, some old local game we aren't in on.
Speaker 2: I shook my head. They all seemed genuinely certain, and
Speaker 2: if it's a joke, it's one nobody's tired of. After decades,
Speaker 2: Festival Street by now felt wrapped in a puzzle box
Speaker 2: of contradictions, neighbors, memories aligned in qualities. What was baked?
Speaker 2: Who played music which children made mischief, but never in time.
Speaker 2: One person's yesterday was another's next week, yet all agreed
Speaker 2: on the substance, as though the street collectively played a
Speaker 2: game of improvisational theater, the reality of the event never
Speaker 2: in question, just the day it occurred. The more I pressed,
Speaker 2: the more intriguing the puzzle became. If I attended one
Speaker 2: version of the festival, say the bakeries, I'd later hear
Speaker 2: George or Hazel describe their presence at a different festival,
Speaker 2: entirely complete with unique stories, names, songs, even the weather.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I found myself present at two different versions, both
Speaker 2: treated with rooted sincerity. I began to worry, as one
Speaker 2: does in the face of mounting contradictions, that I was
Speaker 2: the victim of an elaborate prank, perhaps a communal initiation
Speaker 2: for the retired mailman. But the unstudied, every day nature
Speaker 2: of the oddities belied that. I once examined a decade's
Speaker 2: old photo at Leln's Antiques, capturing a festival parade. In
Speaker 2: the frame, three clocks hung in shop windows, each displaying
Speaker 2: a different hour. Sunlight in the photo came from opposite sides,
Speaker 2: and the bakery's back window was lit as in morning,
Speaker 2: while the market side showed the long, slant shadows of dusk.
Speaker 2: It's just the angle, Lenn said, But even he seemed uncertain.
Speaker 2: That photo haunted me. How could a moment contain multiple
Speaker 2: times in one polarid? Was it multiple photos cleverly stitched?
Speaker 2: I studied the details, shop, awnings, flower pots identical, yet
Speaker 2: clocks disagreeing. One child captured mid laugh in every image.
Speaker 2: Nor could anyone else explain why the records disagreed. The
Speaker 2: annual library board meeting listed the first day of festival
Speaker 2: as conflicting dates every year, small corrections scribbled in pen,
Speaker 2: only to be corrected again. The following archive always a
Speaker 2: bit of a muddle, the town archivist admitted. But that's quaint,
Speaker 2: isn't it. Yet beneath the quaintness I sensed a pattern,
Speaker 2: as if festival streets oddities pointed to something deeper and older.
Speaker 2: Not just a jumble, but a logic, eccentric, perhaps, but
Speaker 2: sturdy as any tradition. Was it a ritual? Once deliberate,
Speaker 2: now only half remembered, a relic of the founding families
Speaker 2: who had woven the calendar to suit their needs, or
Speaker 2: did some part of Festival Street simply refuse to accept
Speaker 2: the tyranny of ordinary time, choosing instead to give every
Speaker 2: neighbor a moment in the sun, convenient, kind and somehow contagious.
Speaker 2: If there was an answer, it was rooted not only
Speaker 2: in the present, but somewhere beneath it, tangled in old stories,
Speaker 2: subtle agreements, and the slow sediment of years. I shifted
Speaker 2: my approach, resolving that the path forward lay not in
Speaker 2: catching neighbors out or timing my mornings to bakery clocks,
Speaker 2: but in seeking the origins. If Festival Street insisted on
Speaker 2: its own time, surely the roots ran deep. I set
Speaker 2: myself the day's work to the library, and from there
Speaker 2: to talk with those whose memories stretched back further than
Speaker 2: the Bakeri's first oven. The library, a postage stamp of
Speaker 2: a building, welcomed me beneath its drooping lilac trees. The
Speaker 2: stacks smelled of leather and candle wax, and the local
Speaker 2: history section, tucked beside a lending table, yielded more than
Speaker 2: I'd expected. Archival posters for the annual Summer's Day Festival
Speaker 2: lined the bottom of a battered filing cabinet, some in
Speaker 2: faded type, others thick with hand written flourishes. I lined
Speaker 2: them up, tracing dates from the nineteen thirties to the present. No.
Speaker 2: Two years listed the festival the same June twenty ninth,
Speaker 2: July one, August tenth, all haphazardly annotated with corrected or rescheduled,
Speaker 2: contradicting the neat register posted at the front desk. Digging deeper,
Speaker 2: I found a set of brittle letters addressed to Festival
Speaker 2: Street Postmaster, stacked in tight script, though brief, Each were
Speaker 2: signed by a different founding family and closed with nea
Speaker 2: identical words, may every day on Festival Street be as
Speaker 2: bright as Summer's day. One letter, older and grayer than
Speaker 2: the rest, stood out to the future. May every day
Speaker 2: on Festival Street feel like Summer's Day? Signed J. Pike, W. Leland, T. Hazen, M.
Speaker 2: Breen and all our kin. It was dated July two
Speaker 2: year unclear. The wish, folded across generations, echoed a kind
Speaker 2: of promise, stubborn as grass growing up through stone, to
Speaker 2: keep the street festive, no matter what the calender claimed.
Speaker 2: I took this to missus Breen, who lived above the
Speaker 2: antique shop and at eighty eight was the street's oldest
Speaker 2: beating heart. She welcomed me in, folded me into the
Speaker 2: archipelago of knitting and photos crowding her parlor, and made tea.
Speaker 2: As I described my hunt for the festival's real date,
Speaker 2: her answer was a gentle laugh. Oh, we always get
Speaker 2: it wrong, and we always get it right. When my
Speaker 2: Jack was alive, we'd walk to the bakery and find
Speaker 2: them half way through a party, then next door the
Speaker 2: same evening for another. No one s ever agreed on
Speaker 2: the date, and thank Heaven for it keeps you from
Speaker 2: growing lonely if you miss one. I pressed on family milestones, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries.
Speaker 2: Missus Breen's memories cascaded warmly, but her dates never matched
Speaker 2: the town ledger. Her sister's wedding the summer it rained
Speaker 2: so hard was remembered on three different days by the
Speaker 2: three aunts I later asked. Everyone swore they were right,
Speaker 2: but none with anger, only fond certainty. If anything. She reminisced,
Speaker 2: the confusion made it easier for everyone to be included.
Speaker 2: Miss the first celebration, there'll be another, miss the second.
Speaker 2: There's one brewing next door. Something nagged a feel, not
Speaker 2: of mistake, but of a mutual agreement growing sharper as
Speaker 2: I listened. I left her, pocketing my notes and returning
Speaker 2: down fest Street under the fluttering bunting. All my old frameworks,
Speaker 2: postal logic, scheduled rounds. The push for precision felt out
Speaker 2: of place here. The question was no longer simple, not
Speaker 2: just why do these dates not match, but how and
Speaker 2: why does a street belong to its own calendar. That night,
Speaker 2: I returned to leland Es to pore over old photo albums.
Speaker 2: I asked to see weddings, markets, celebrations, the famous fire
Speaker 2: at the flower shop, the unveiling of the weird iron
Speaker 2: weather vane. Each event, always on Festival Street, appeared in
Speaker 2: multiple albums, with subtle but profound mismatches. Identical crowds in
Speaker 2: different coats, one photo labeled Sunny Parade nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: another same composition tagged Rainy Festival eighty three. Clocks disagreed,
Speaker 2: windows showed sun at one angle, then another, and Missus
Speaker 2: Pike's hair changed lengths from frame to frame, though she
Speaker 2: stood in the same dress and pose by the bakery
Speaker 2: sign on the backs. Relatives pennied dates with cheerful certainty.
Speaker 2: June tenth, June twelve June seventeen, all for the same occasion.
Speaker 2: I examined a bundle of letters preserved in a shoe box.
Speaker 2: Each referenced communal events, last night's festival to morrow's bay cough,
Speaker 2: what happened Tuesday, but bundled and postmarked for the same day.
Speaker 2: Impossible to reconcile in the company of these artifacts, I
Speaker 2: felt the familiar world's slip just a little. I returned
Speaker 2: to Hazel, photo and letter in hand. She smiled, her
Speaker 2: expression unruffled. That's how things go here, she said, everyone
Speaker 2: gets their own festival. Mister Lelland, folding up another photo, added,
Speaker 2: maybe it's the founder's trick, keep us cheerful, no matter
Speaker 2: how glum the rest of the year gets. And Elsie
Speaker 2: forever bustling, piped in from the flower Shop Memories Jackson.
Speaker 2: They bend with age, pick the day that feels lightest.
Speaker 2: That's what we do. Later, recording a conversation with George
Speaker 2: and Hazel together, I asked each when the last festival
Speaker 2: parade was. Hazel recalled Tuesday a rain filled affair. George
Speaker 2: was adamant it was Thursday. Crisp and sunny. Both agreed.
Speaker 2: They stood side by side on the bakery curb, watching
Speaker 2: the same children march by, each describing a different band,
Speaker 2: leader and banner. Neither seemed inclined to argue. In fact,
Speaker 2: there was an ease in the way they accepted their
Speaker 2: mismatched memories, an unspoken compact that both versions could stand.
Speaker 2: The more I gathered, the clearer the pattern. Festival Street
Speaker 2: was not simply varied in recollection, nor merely eccentric. The contradictions,
Speaker 2: mounting and physical, went beyond the malleability of memory. Here
Speaker 2: was a community that deliberately or unconsciously, had woven its
Speaker 2: own patchwork of time, each neighbor not alone within it.
Speaker 2: Each day potentially remade. I closed the day on George's
Speaker 2: rickety porch. Evening missed creeping in through the wood slats,
Speaker 2: my notes filled pages, the photographs sprawled at my feet.
Speaker 2: I felt suddenly that the search for a single true
Speaker 2: date had missed the mark entirely. Festival Street's world was
Speaker 2: not misaligned, but plural. Each memory, each event, spun out
Speaker 2: into its own small orbit, and the space between those
Speaker 2: orbits was not confusion but kindness. What bound them, I realized,
Speaker 2: was not the need for order, but the desire that
Speaker 2: no festival be left unattended, no memory be left unloved.
Speaker 2: At the center of the mystery was not chaos, but
Speaker 2: a subtle logic, a logic of inclusion, flexible and enduring.
Speaker 2: My curiosity sharpened, twisted from how can this be? Toward
Speaker 2: a question less concrete but more compelling. What does it
Speaker 2: mean for a community to make time its own, to
Speaker 2: live not by clock and calendar but through a living,
Speaker 2: breathing web of festive, layered and recursive. How far back
Speaker 2: did the tradition go? And was it a quirk of
Speaker 2: convenience or something more profound? That night, sorting through letters
Speaker 2: and photographs, surrounded by mismatched dates and impossible evidence, I
Speaker 2: turned the puzzle over and over, certain only that finding
Speaker 2: the truth would mean letting go of easy answers and
Speaker 2: looking more closely at the deeper logic beneath the gentle
Speaker 2: swirl of festival streets. Days George put his feet up
Speaker 2: on the porch rail, the ticking of an old clock
Speaker 2: mingling with the sound of crickets rising through the dusk.
Speaker 2: I stayed a long time after the light had gone,
Speaker 2: reviewing pages of my spidery handwriting. There was a comfort
Speaker 2: in being near the one person on Festival Street I
Speaker 2: could pester with relentless questions without running the risk of
Speaker 2: a fence. You're not sleeping again, George observed, squinting past
Speaker 2: his mug of tea. Saw your light on all hours
Speaker 2: dreaming up away to fit us back on to the calendar.
Speaker 2: I started to answer, and realized I couldn't really put
Speaker 2: the tangle into words, at least not in a way
Speaker 2: that didn't sound touched. The contradiction had become its own country.
Speaker 2: My years on the route, keeping days as neat as
Speaker 2: stacked envelopes felt far away from Festival Street's gentle scramble.
Speaker 2: So instead I asked, you ever find it lonesome? Not
Speaker 2: being able to agree if something already happened or if
Speaker 2: it's still coming up. I wasn't even sure what answer
Speaker 2: I wanted, he snorted. Lonesome not likely. Usually I find
Speaker 2: I get twice the cake, so that's a plus. Then,
Speaker 2: more thoughtfully, isn't so different from living with a house
Speaker 2: full of clocks, all set a few seconds off. It's
Speaker 2: the conversation that's the point, isn't it. Otherwise life gets stale,
Speaker 2: A wave of something like relief and helpless amusement washed
Speaker 2: over me. And what about events? Birthdays, festivals, the big things?
Speaker 2: Don't you ever want to nail the day down? George
Speaker 2: leaned forward, elbows on knees. You know, my mother used
Speaker 2: to say, some days the world agrees with you, and
Speaker 2: some days you have to carry the world a little
Speaker 2: further on your own. Maybe on Festival Street we get
Speaker 2: more second chances than most. That night, I resolved to
Speaker 2: try something backwards to my natural instincts. The next morning,
Speaker 2: instead of referencing my watch or the little calendar on
Speaker 2: my phone, I tucked both away in my bag. I
Speaker 2: made up my mind to spend several days living only
Speaker 2: in the rhythm and invitations of Festival Street, following its
Speaker 2: shifting sense of occasion. I wanted the full taste, not
Speaker 2: as an observer, but as a participant, as if summoned.
Speaker 2: Elsie was first to call me in early Jackson, don't
Speaker 2: miss to day. Missus Pike's putting on a summer day's party.
Speaker 2: Sun caught her hair in its late morning orange, and
Speaker 2: the air was powdered with flower and something sweet. But
Speaker 2: didn't she just I trailed off, catching myself if the
Speaker 2: party was to day, then to day it would be.
Speaker 2: The bakery was a spill of neighbors, laughter, and music.
Speaker 2: Missus Pike herself handed me a plate piled dangerously with
Speaker 2: buns of three varieties, humming an unfamiliar tune. A string
Speaker 2: of children came barreling through, faces sticky with icing. Everyone
Speaker 2: described the occasion as the festival, yet the details didn't
Speaker 2: quite match the stories I had gathered earlier. It didn't matter.
Speaker 2: There was a crowd and there was singing, and I
Speaker 2: ate two slices of lemon tart to mark whatever celebration
Speaker 2: we had made for ourselves. I drifted out mid afternoon,
Speaker 2: resisting the urge to note the day's specifics, and ambled
Speaker 2: down to Lelon's shop. Just as he was lighting a
Speaker 2: pair of lanterns. Outside, someone had strung bunting from lampost
Speaker 2: to window ledge. Inside, he offered cider and told the
Speaker 2: story of a different festival, how the unveiling of a
Speaker 2: bronze ship's bell long ago had drawn a crowd larger
Speaker 2: than the present day parade. He insisted today was the
Speaker 2: anniversary of that event. His customers and the handful of
Speaker 2: children prodding at a clockwork fish seemed glad for any
Speaker 2: excuse to snack. By evening, I found myself lured into
Speaker 2: yet another event. The hardware store, its windows swaddled in
Speaker 2: overlapping fliers, all but dragged me in for what the
Speaker 2: proprietor gleefully proclaimed the real summer day's festival hardware style,
Speaker 2: not to be confused with the bakery's hat antea party.
Speaker 2: Within a single day, I'd attended three festivals, each complete,
Speaker 2: each sincere, each slightly askew in theme, company, and narrative.
Speaker 2: The bakery was all sweetness and reminiscence, the antique shop
Speaker 2: nostalgia and history. The hardware store noisy and raucous, with
Speaker 2: a game involving buckets, bean bags, and more spilled lemonade
Speaker 2: than I saw in a summer I started to understand
Speaker 2: something subtle. There was a warmth, a permeability to the
Speaker 2: way Festival Street held its traditions. Each version of a
Speaker 2: celebration gave a place of belonging. Nobody corrected any one
Speaker 2: else's account. Instead, there was gentle humor, an upwelling of
Speaker 2: kindness in the face of all this cheerful contradiction. Over
Speaker 2: the days that followed, I noticed a peculiar benefit to
Speaker 2: this flexible reality not just that everyone seemed to find
Speaker 2: their own celebration, but that nobody was left out. Between
Speaker 2: the repeated festivals, the shifting invitations, and the ease with
Speaker 2: which any neighbor could step into or out of an event,
Speaker 2: it was as if Festival Street had invented a method
Speaker 2: to ensure nobody's special moment went unattended, no story went unshared.
Speaker 2: Hazel voiced it best as we watched Elsie tie a
Speaker 2: sheaf of peonies to a mailbox. It's a gift, she
Speaker 2: told me, eyes crinkling at the corners. Everyone gets their festival.
Speaker 2: You never miss out, even if you show up late
Speaker 2: or early, or bring the pie. If you're lonesome, just
Speaker 2: come by. Someone will have a festival for you, even
Speaker 2: if it's not quite to day. I listened as Elsie
Speaker 2: gave her own philosophy. Maybe it's just a way to
Speaker 2: admit memories don't always line up. Some folks always remember
Speaker 2: things brighter, some folks always think it was last Tuesday.
Speaker 2: What's so terrible about that? As long as everyone's willing
Speaker 2: to celebrate with you. Tourists felt the effect as well.
Speaker 2: I spotted a pair of visitors following handwritten invitations please
Speaker 2: join us for the summer day any time you wish.
Speaker 2: They confessed they'd heard three different dates and all were correct.
Speaker 2: They'd walked into the bakery on one day, the antiques
Speaker 2: shop the next, and the hardware store the third. Each
Speaker 2: event ushered in with the same enthusiasm. As I paid
Speaker 2: closer attention, I noticed practical changes too. Shop doors were
Speaker 2: marked festival time open or simply come in it's to day.
Speaker 2: Invitations were written on chalkboards and cards with undated prompts,
Speaker 2: join us whenever you're free. The strangeness had stopped ringing false.
Speaker 2: It now sounded deliberate, as if some decision taken long
Speaker 2: before I ever set out with my mail bag had
Speaker 2: been slowly, quietly codified into a living calendar only Festival
Speaker 2: Street could read. The celebrations were real, the memory of
Speaker 2: each event real, the timing negotiable, and everyone seemed the
Speaker 2: happier for it. But if Festival Street's flexible days arose
Speaker 2: out of custom, how had it begun? What force had
Speaker 2: held this consensus together for so long? Was this a
Speaker 2: remnant of deliberate folklore or something more elemental, born of
Speaker 2: hardship or desire for connection. The answers I realized lay
Speaker 2: further back in the stories of those who remembered harder
Speaker 2: times and the town's strange founding pledge. I went once
Speaker 2: more to the archives and back to Missus Breen, my
Speaker 2: guiding light through these can centric circles of time. Her
Speaker 2: living room was cool and dim, her needles clicking quietly
Speaker 2: as I set out my new thesis that Festival Street's
Speaker 2: traditions were more than drift or mistake, but something closer
Speaker 2: to craft, held together by generational intention. Here s what
Speaker 2: we learned coming out of that winter. Oh must have
Speaker 2: been nineteen forty seven or so, Missus Breen began. There
Speaker 2: was no sense in sitting alone waiting for the official
Speaker 2: festival day. That was scarce comfort if your husband was
Speaker 2: out to see or your children gone. The town's official
Speaker 2: calendar ticked along, but sometimes the heart disagrees. So we
Speaker 2: made an agreement, unspoken but real. She paused, holding my gaze.
Speaker 2: Every day will be someone's festival, so nobody is alone.
Speaker 2: Each house picked a day to mark, and we all
Speaker 2: showed up for it as best we could. Soon the
Speaker 2: custom grew. It wasn't long before the days came loose
Speaker 2: from the string no two houses ever quite agreed when
Speaker 2: the real day fell, but there were so many to
Speaker 2: choose from, and always someone baking or cleaning or singing
Speaker 2: for the next This, I realized, was what had taken root,
Speaker 2: not chaos, but solidarity. What began as an act of
Speaker 2: survival had flowered into an elastic culture, festival Street, always
Speaker 2: open for celebration. With my curiosity now burning in a
Speaker 2: different direction, I returned to George and Hazel, hats in hand,
Speaker 2: seeking a conversation that might settle the lingering contradictions, or
Speaker 2: at least frame them in new light. We sat together
Speaker 2: in George's shop, the walls chattering quietly with clocks. So
Speaker 2: you're saying, I ventured that the whole street simply agreed,
Speaker 2: And then somehow the agreement became the way things were.
Speaker 2: Even the mail, the photographs, the stories all shifted year
Speaker 2: after year to match whichever day a neighbor felt needed
Speaker 2: it most. Hazel grinned, why not, isn't that what friends do?
Speaker 2: George nodded, it's not lying, it's making sure memories fit
Speaker 2: so nobody's celebration gets lost. Outside dusk gathered. For the
Speaker 2: first time, I saw how practical, even radical such kindness
Speaker 2: could be Festival Street's refusal to nail down its events
Speaker 2: was not a vagary to be corrected, but a living contract.
Speaker 2: Each timeline allowed for longing, forgetfulness, heartache, a complaint I'd
Speaker 2: heard often over the years elsewhere about missed birthdays and
Speaker 2: lonely anniversaries. But here the answer was always another celebration,
Speaker 2: another day, another invitation. Slipping easily into memory, I brought
Speaker 2: up the strange evidence. I'd collected letters referencing contradictory festivals,
Speaker 2: photographs that seemed to contain impossible times of day, the
Speaker 2: mutating calendars. Jaw traced a finger over an old shop photo.
Speaker 2: If you squint at it, you could say, we've all
Speaker 2: made our own little festival worlds, put enough of them together,
Speaker 2: and no one has to feel left out. Why wouldn't
Speaker 2: reality go along with a wish like that if enough
Speaker 2: of us believe it? The scientific part of my mind,
Speaker 2: honed over years of seeing addresses line up, struggled. But
Speaker 2: how can the clocks the mail? How does it work?
Speaker 2: Maybe it doesn't matter, Hazel offered, Or maybe it's just
Speaker 2: the way memories bend. What was the story if three
Speaker 2: people remember a thing three ways? It only becomes a
Speaker 2: better story. Still, some part of me wanted more, some
Speaker 2: hint of mechanism, or at least a clearer boundary between
Speaker 2: play and reality. Later that evening, I found myself sitting
Speaker 2: with George, the shop dark and still, but for the
Speaker 2: thick harmony of ticking time pieces. Is it all just nostalgia?
Speaker 2: I asked, some trick of habit and affection, gumming up
Speaker 2: what should be clear. George set down his mug, meeting
Speaker 2: my searching glance. Does it really strike you as confusion
Speaker 2: after all this? He waited, and when I didn't answer, continued.
Speaker 2: I believe it's a choice most days, at least it
Speaker 2: is now. Maybe the first year it was just folks
Speaker 2: helping each other get by, But now the street keeps
Speaker 2: its own time, not out of mistake, but so everyone
Speaker 2: gets to have a day. Doesn't that make for a
Speaker 2: messy history? I pressed? How does the next generation remember
Speaker 2: what happened? When George's face folded into a slow, creased smile.
Speaker 2: Maybe memory isn't the point. Maybe the whole point is
Speaker 2: making new ones together as often as we like. It
Speaker 2: came to me, unwinding slowly, but surely I have been
Speaker 2: searching for order, where in fact, continual renewal was the
Speaker 2: deeper logic. Festival Street's time wasn't meant to be tamed.
Speaker 2: It was meant to be lived again and again, a
Speaker 2: perpetual act of hospitality and generosity. It wasn't chaos. It
Speaker 2: was collective improvisation, a concerted opting in to each neighbor's
Speaker 2: moment of celebration without fear of missing out or being
Speaker 2: left behind. I returned to my notes, the mismatched dates,
Speaker 2: the festival that would not stay, contained the contradictory photographs.
Speaker 2: None of these were evidence of error. They were living
Speaker 2: records of generosity. Deliberate and enduring tradition had ossified into
Speaker 2: a reality so flexible that it could accommodate all manner
Speaker 2: of memory and preference, Always erring on the side of inclusion.
Speaker 2: Festival Street had, by sheer habit and will rewritten time
Speaker 2: to serve community. Any impulse to track down the right
Speaker 2: day faded. I started accepting every invitation with a lighter heart.
Speaker 2: Not only did I find myself less fretful about missed moments,
Speaker 2: I also noticed the neighbors warming further, as if my
Speaker 2: willingness to merge my own sense of schedule with theirs
Speaker 2: was an act of trust. I saw others, tourists and
Speaker 2: newcomers catching on, choosing the version of the celebration that
Speaker 2: suited their needs, or better, simply drifting from event to
Speaker 2: a vent, content to make their stories blend with those
Speaker 2: already in play. On the Saturday that, according to my
Speaker 2: note book, ought to have been the official Summer Day's Festival,
Speaker 2: I walked the length of Festival Street at sunset light,
Speaker 2: painted everything gold, and I watched as three houses Pikes
Speaker 2: Elsie's above the shop, and George's, were each aglow with lanterns,
Speaker 2: strings of colored paper, and voices raised in three different songs.
Speaker 2: Children darted from house to house, faces alight with the
Speaker 2: hope of second and third helpings. Visitors hovered program in hand,
Speaker 2: delighted by the sense that no matter which door they chose,
Speaker 2: they would find themselves between a welcome and a familiar tune.
Speaker 2: I stopped to talk with Marv, the grocer, who was
Speaker 2: passing out punch from an old enamel bowl outside his shop.
Speaker 2: Three festivals same night, I asked, He laughed, why stop
Speaker 2: at three? If you keep walking, you'll find the post
Speaker 2: office still serving cookies. For to morrow's parade. People remember
Speaker 2: what they most need. Sometimes that means two festivals in
Speaker 2: one day. You get tired of counting, but you never
Speaker 2: run out of cake. If there was any confusion, it
Speaker 2: was only the beautiful kind that leaves more room rather
Speaker 2: than less, for celebration. The contradictions I once tried to
Speaker 2: resolve became touches of color, each story layered over the next,
Speaker 2: more intricate, more accommodating, always ready to be believed. Standing
Speaker 2: in the middle of the street that evening, the sounds
Speaker 2: of three distinct parties drifting past, I realize the true
Speaker 2: impossibility of Festival Street is not that it cannot keep
Speaker 2: its days straight, but that it has invented a gentler world,
Speaker 2: one where meaning is made not by strict adherents to time,
Speaker 2: but by the gentle, persistent act of showing up again
Speaker 2: and again for each other. Later, back up on George's porch,
Speaker 2: the air perfumed with cake and sea water, we watched
Speaker 2: the street's shifting lights. I came looking for an explanation,
Speaker 2: I admitted, and learned it was an invitation all along.
Speaker 2: George nodded, and, after a pause, offered, most good things
Speaker 2: are I spent my last week in Winslow Harbor with
Speaker 2: my old, carefully kept calendars left unmarked in my bag.
Speaker 2: I still noticed the quirks that always be something a
Speaker 2: quarter step off about the post mark, the way a
Speaker 2: neighbor recollected a song from the wrong year, or an
Speaker 2: invitation appeared out of the blue. But now each small
Speaker 2: contradiction felt less like an itch and more like a comfort,
Speaker 2: a reminder the ordinary can always bend to kindness. Returning
Speaker 2: to my own routines, I saw small errors everywhere. A
Speaker 2: shop opening late, a friend remembering a birthday on the
Speaker 2: wrong day. I found myself smiling at the moments when
Speaker 2: tradition yielded to compassion, and no longer felt obliged to
Speaker 2: correct a date if the laughter was genuine and the
Speaker 2: company good. The meaningfulness of a day, I began to
Speaker 2: spec is almost never in its number. Other towns, other
Speaker 2: traditions surely harbour similar bends in their own time, places
Speaker 2: where rules yield to warmth. I had thought Festival Street unique.
Speaker 2: Now I wondered how many other communities quietly shuffled the
Speaker 2: calendar to make room for each other. I never did
Speaker 2: resolve each contradiction, but I no longer needed to. On
Speaker 2: my last evening, I found myself walking once more down
Speaker 2: Festival Street at dusk, the day's light stretching indigo over
Speaker 2: Eve's and sun warmed brick. Laughter and music billowed from
Speaker 2: three homes at once, one party for a wedding remembered early,
Speaker 2: one for a birthday celebrated late, one, perhaps for no
Speaker 2: reason other than company itself. I paused, hands in pockets,
Speaker 2: hearing three songs mesh in the evening air, watching lantern's
Speaker 2: dance and children dart between doorways. It struck me what
Speaker 2: truly makes a day special? Is it the hour or
Speaker 2: the label? Or is it the willingness again and again
Speaker 2: to mark the good with others, to answer an invitation
Speaker 2: for celebration, no matter what the calendar says. Festival Street,
Speaker 2: in its quietly impossible way, had taught me we remember
Speaker 2: not by the lines we draw on a chart, but
Speaker 2: by the care and intention we give each gathering, each neighbor,
Speaker 2: each bright corner of our days together. Walking on, I
Speaker 2: realized I'd never look at a calendar or a crowd
Speaker 2: quite the same way again.
Speaker 1: And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one,