First Friday celebrates with Independence Day parade and activities

Howard Kerr, a World War II veteran, will be the Grand Marshall of the Independence Day Parade in Towanda on Friday, July 1.

The parade is part of the July First Friday Celebration, which will also include street vendors, food and crafts vendors, store specials, Ben Franklin Crafts make and take patriotic crafts and community fun. The parade will begin with a fun run, a flyover by the Bradford County Pilots Association, and the peeling of church bells in Towanda. The First Friday Committee is still looking for organizations, groups, individuals to participate in the parade on July 1. Scheduled to appear in the parade are the Penn-York Highlander Bagpipes, Towanda High School Marching Band, Uncle Sam, vintage cars, fire trucks, costume characters, and various local groups.

If you would like to participate in the event, please contact Sharon Kaminsky at (570) 268-2787 or sharon@bcrac.org. A Firecracker Fun Run will precede the parade at 6:30 p.m. beginning at the bottom of Plank Road and proceeding along the parade route on Main Street ending at the corner of Elizabeth and Main streets. Everyone is invited to participate in the run. The parade steps off at 7 p.m. Ben Franklin Crafts will be hosting a Patriotic Quilt Show and will present the American Valor Quilt donated by the Ghent Hill Quilt Club and Ben Franklin Crafts to the Grand Marshall of the Parade during the patriotic ceremony following the parade on the Court House steps. The ceremony will begin with the National Anthem performed by local singers and followed by the reading of the Declaration of Independence by Joel Crayton. The Key to the City will be presented to the Grand Marshall of the parade by Towanda Borough Mayor, Garrett Miller. A speech will be given by the Bradford County Veterans and the Memorial Park Association. Tina Picket will present all participating World War II veterans with a certificate of participation and Ben Franklin will be handing out 100 copies of the Declaration of Independence.

The First Friday Committee invites all community members to become involved in First Friday events and thanks the business sponsors of this year's parade including Chemung Canal Bank and First Liberty Bank. First Friday is made possible by the following participating organizations and businesses: Ben Franklin Crafts, Dry Goods Plus and Deli, Bradford County Regional Arts Council, Costume Capers, Borton-Lawson Engineering, KZFM Radio, Wiggle 100, YMCA, Pennsylvania North Country Artisan Center and Store, Weigh Station Café, Memorial Hospital Wellness Department, Country Peddler, Nancy's Purple Iris, Rainbow's End and St. Agnes School and other community participants. First Friday is a community event open to all community members and began as an effort to build community and bring people out on the town to mingle with neighbors and friends. To learn more, visit the new First Friday website at www.firstfridaytowandapa.org or join First Friday on Facebook as www.facebook.com/firstfridaydowntowntowanda. If you are interested in becoming involved with First Friday celebrations, please contact any participating merchant or the Bradford County Regional Arts Council at (570) 268-ARTS. First Friday is always looking for street performers, artisans, community groups and others to join the community effort. All are welcome and everyone is celebrated.

It's Just Jennifer...: Marshall Dry Goods

My younger sister is a quilter.  She's made 4 quilts for my kids... a baby quilt for each of them and Olivia has a twin sized quilt.  They are all awesome.  I need to get some pictures of them.  She decided it was time to make Isabelle a twin sized quilt for her birthday in April.  She's found a pattern and needed to go buy fabric for it and remembered a place she had been to before called Marshall Dry Goods.  It's in Batesville, which is about an hour and a half from where we live.  She asked me if I wanted to go with her, so I jumped on it.  The morning started out kind of rough... my husband was on call and actually got called out about 2am.  He doesn't normally get called out when he's on call, but - of course - since I had plans it had to happen.  He didn't get home until 7:30am.  We had planned to leave by 7am (I had to be home about 1pm and there was 3 hours worth of driving to do), so we got a late start, but it was fine.  We had plenty of time to browse and not feel rushed. I learned several things over the few hours we were away from home.  The first is that I'm a terrible navigator.  Seriously.  She has GPS on her phone with turn-by-turn directions and I was keeping up with it.  But there were at least three times I said "Oops!  You were supposed to turn there!"  And I'm really bad with left/right directions... always have been.  I didn't realize she was too.  So I'm sitting there getting it all straight in my head to tell her to turn left or right and she's trying to go the other way.  It's probably a miracle we made it.  But we did.  Needless to say she turned on the voice directions for our drive back, which was actually pretty funny when we stopped for lunch and sat down to eat and the GPS started telling my sister directions from her back pocket! Batesville is not exactly a bustling metropolis.  And the store is just tucked away in an old building.  It's not fancy by any stretch of the imagination. I think I heard someone say that they have been open 60 years.  And I think I found some fabric that has been there about that long.  I was a little worried when I started browsing.  I'm picky about fabric.  It doesn't have to be designer, in fact I think plenty of designer fabric is just plain obnoxious and ugly.

Annual report

Report. 1st- 1887-19

The dry goods reporter

Business administration

Reports of civil and criminal cases decided by the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 1785-1951