The NY Times this morning had almost the whole Op Ed page devoted to the annual concentration on the Thanksgiving Holiday AND the Macy’s parade.  Our friend, Carole is going with her family up to stay in a hotel on the route of the parade to see it.  This is one of the worst times to fly up to NY and mix in that huge mosh of people trying to get in line on the streets to see something that would be much better viewed on television.

But, what got me thinking about the parade and I cannot really remember ever seeing it close at hand was that it was because of a puppeteer, Tony Sarg, who made it happen.  Just a parade of people marching down New York’s famous streets with bands and people in uniforms would not make for an historical yearly event.  Mr. Sarg dreamed up the idea of huge blow-up (then filled with helium) puppets of animal figures which morphed, over the years, into favorite comic strip and folk-hero figures.  The parade goes on despite the weather and Carole’s family will be nice and warm no matter what for they have found the best spot to do the viewing which, for the common folk, is down at the curb hoping for a chink to see the marchers.  Of course, the most exciting events are the gas filled creatures held down by Macy’s employees who hold the ropes anchoring the figures and moving them along the route.

I never met Tony Sarg but knew of him for I had read of his impact on the New York scene because of his conventional puppetry and then his outsize conceptions which have captivated audiences for generations.  I felt an affinity for his need to be creative and he certainly was and I think, in some small way, I followed his career with one of my own (my night job) where I loosened the rein on my artistic abilities.

Building a marionette is simple for me.  I have made all kinds of puppets for my fingers itch to bring to life things made of cloth, wood, Styrofoam and bits and pieces of available left overs from old projects.  In the spirit of Tony Sarg I once tried to make a huge figure that I could lift up above a rooftop so that it would have its head raised and two hands resting on the ledge.  I never got very far with it for I did it on the cheap and it did not become the startling event that I hoped for.  It was just a whole lot of cloth with stiffening wire that might have worked if I had help to use poles to raise it up so that it would tower over the building and astound viewers.

I have had to cut back but I did make A 1 (a marionette of my 13 year old self) who will appear with me at my second Bar Mitzvah on November 14, 2009.