Steward Setback Saturday: Getting Prepped for Calkins Day: One Striped Shirt, Check

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Getting Prepped for Calkins Day: One Striped Shirt, Check

“Of course, the highlight of the year is the Calkins Day parade on February thirteenth, my birthday. In fact, I have a petition circulating to make February twelfth through the fourteenth a three-day national holiday. Would you care to sign it?” (Bryony, Chapter 22, Lisa Harding)

As she walked in his direction to join him, Melissa saw a pot-bellied, bespectacled, gray-haired man wearing blue jeans and a white and red-striped shirt. He was pushing a pallet jack full of newspapers toward the table where John-Peter sat. Ed Calkins! The Steward of Tara! (Visage, Chapter 23: No Holds Barred)

Ed approached the next carrier. “Would you care to sign my petition? You see, my birthday falls between Lincoln’s birthday and Valentine’s Day, so I believe it should be a national holiday, complete with a parade.”(Visage, Chapter 23: No Holds Barred)

No new carrier slipped through the ranks without at least one request to sign Ed Calkins’ petition. Ed’s birthday fell between Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and Valentine’s Day, a fact significant enough, Ed felt, to warrant a three-day national holiday.

“The time will come when everyone around the world will eagerly anticipate the Ed Calkins Day parade,” Ed always said, beaming, as he pressed both paper and pen into the hesitant carrier’s hands.

In the meantime, Ed himself offered the joys and excitement of his parade to the elite crowd fortunate enough to deliver newspapers in the middle of the night from the Jenson warehouse. 

For as long as John-Peter could remember, he celebrated each February thirteen watching a carrier pull Uncle Ed through the building on the pallet jack, one John-Peter had decorated with green streamers and balloons for the occasion, while an exuberant Ed waved to his constituents with one hand and tossed bite-sized, wrapped pieces of candies from the other one toward the work stations.

("Staked!" Chapter 4: Midnight Apprentice)

Ah, Ed Calkins. What would this character be like without his famous petition and delusion that February 13 should be a national holiday? And yet, what better way to celebrate fiction in general and the BryonySeries in particular, than with a nonexistent holiday?

Sooooooo, in preparation for February 13, Ed Calkins Day, I've begun collecting items I will need for a modest parade Calkins Day parade of one (me).

And here we go!