More on New England More on Boston's First Night 2002
Round and round with the Cycling Murrays
With three unicycles, a quadricycle, and a scooter bike, this family just loves a parade
By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent, 12/29/2002
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More on New England More on Boston's First Night 2002
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"I can't hear you," shouts the driver.
"Right on Moulton Road! "
A passenger in between squints up the road. "Is he taking a right?"
Traveling with the Cycling Murrays, like traveling with any large family, is a bit of a circus act. On the road, the troupe flies by the seats of their form-fitting white pants. The family of five spends nearly every weekend driving to parades around the Northeast in their Ford van, which can seat up to 15 — usually room enough for parents Don and Jean and their three daughters, Tegan, 30, and identical twins Jannah and Tara, 28.
Often, family and friends go along for the ride. On this day, cruising in fits and starts through southeastern New Hampshire, it's Jean's mother, Mary Powers, 83, and three elderly and infirm aunts: Esther Powers, 87; Ruthie Powers, 80; and Katie Evans, 85. The Powerses, all sisters-in-law, look out for Katie, who has Alzheimer's, while the Murrays cycle the parade route.
"They like to rate the parades," Tara says of her grandmother and aunts. "But it's very subjective. If people stand in front and block their view, it's a thumbs down. We ride by and say, `There are those four old la-
dies again! They must be stalking us."'
The cycles — two standard ones and a five-foot-tall "giraffe" unicycle, a two-seated "quadricycle," which Don welded together from two bikes, and Jean's Ingo Bike, which is a cross between a scooter and a bicycle — ride behind in a trailer.
I hopped a ride, along with a photographer, for a day of holiday parades and sightseeing in Hampton and Exeter, N.H. The Murrays, you see, don't just cycle and run. They try to get to a town early enough, or stay late enough, to poke around.
The crowds love the Murrays. They've been on the parade circuit since First Night Boston in 1987, when the daughters were teenagers. Jean had bought an old unicycle for $4 at a yard sale, and her daughters taught themselves to ride. Within a few years, Jean and Don started walking in front of the cycling girls with a banner but later started riding their own cycles. As the girls got the hang of unicycling, they signed on for more parades. Now, they appear in more than 70 each year, including, this week, First Night Boston: They jump rope on their unicycles. They play fifes as they pedal. If they're behind a team of Clydesdales, the crowds roar when they slalom around manure.
"They're like the Blue Angels," gasped one awed onlooker at the Exeter parade.
This trip culminated a tough week for the family. An elderly cousin ("like a grandfather," Jannah says) had died unexpectedly on Monday. They had organized the wake for Wednesday and had been the chief mourners at the funeral on Thursday. That had not left much time to plan what to see and where to go in Hampton and Exeter. Then, when Jean and Tara had gone to the library to check out New Hampshire travel books, they found themselves accidentally locked in after closing time, and set off the burglar alarm.
Jannah called the Chamber of Commerce in Hampton. They put her on to the historical society's Tuck Museum, with an adjunct fire museum and one-room schoolhouse.
Tara took on Exeter. She called the local historical society, which faxed her a map of the historic homes in the area. When she started to call around to those that might be open to the public, she hit a wall. The day after the Murrays would be there, the town was planning a big holiday tour. They refused to let people in the day before. So Tara called Phillips Exeter Academy, thinking that the library there might be worth seeing, or the art gallery. There, too, she was discouraged. The administrator she spoke with told her they could wander around the school, but if they took a photo, security would escort them off campus. Tara decided the family would make do with a driving tour of Exeter.
The Murrays, a slender, long-haired clan, live in a snug house in Cambridge, from which they run their unicycling business and manage short-term rental real estate. In many ways, they're typically Cantabridgian: Don is an environmental consultant. They're vegans, and they don't drink, smoke, or eat sugar. On the road, they jam-pack a big cooler full of tofu sandwiches, carrots, and celery sticks. They take their cat to a holistic veterinarian for weekly acupuncture sessions. The girls were home-schooled. The Murrays also have an old-world dedication to family. Aunts, cousins, and grandparents don't just speak regularly; they provide safety nets for one another — along with a few good-natured barbs.
"Dad!" Tegan, the navigator, shouts. "You're on 1A! You were supposed to be on 101! I didn't tell you to get on 1A."
For all the havoc, the Murrays always find their parades on time. Our first stop is the Tuck Museum on Park Avenue. We happen upon a sign for it.
Inside, director Betty Moore, delighted to see the Murrays in their red, green, and white holiday costumes, wearing bells on their shoes and around their necks, gives us the nickel tour. Don eyes text beside some old pictures. "What's a staddle?" he asks.
"They're posts you put in marshes to dry hay," Betty informs him. "We have extensive salt marshes here. Hampton was a cattle-raising town. They harvested their hay from the marshes. It made the milk taste different."
We wander single file through the snow, out to an old one-room schoolhouse, filled with desks from different eras, slate writing boards, and primers. Tara finds a dunce cap in the corner and tries it on for size. On each desk lies the sheet music for "School Days."
"Grandma used to sing this," Tegan says. "Where's grandma?"
Mary steps in to the schoolhouse, stamping the snow off her feet, and Tegan and Tara burst into song. "School days, school days, dear old golden rule days."
"You were my queen in calico," Mary joins in. "I was your bashful barefoot beau."
After a stop in the Seacoast Fire Museum, where Mary clangs the fire bell, we clamber back into the van and head for the parade. Soon, we find ourselves slowed to a crawl by parade detours.
"Wasn't this the parade where Jannah fell last year?" Don asks. "Tegan was on the high unicycle. Jannah was behind her, holding her hands. Tegan went over a bump, and landed on her feet, but Jannah's unicycle went out from under her and she just went straight down."
Falls are infrequent, but unicycling does have its perils. At the holiday parades, marchers often carry buckets of hard candy to toss to children along the route.
"With the unicycle, if you see a bump, you can handle it. If you don't, you're down," says Jannah. "The candy is treacherous."
But they love the parades, and the interaction they have with the audience. "People yell, `Do you have any brothers?"' says Tara. "We say, `The boys are at home. They're not talented at all."'
With time to spare, Don finds his way to the parade's start. The family unpacks the cycles, and Don and Tegan drive Mary and the aunts to a parking lot by the reviewing stand, where they can watch the show and keep warm. Father and daughter pedal the quadricycle back. A group of clowns huddles nearby.
"The clowns always gravitate toward us," Jannah allows.
They set out. It's cold, and the parade moves at a snail's pace. The Murrays pull out their bag of tricks at every stop, executing loop de loops and pinwheels.
"Mom and Dad and the kids, they all have long hair!" cries one spectator. "How can they balance on that?" a child asks his mother.
The Murrays' entourage, cozy in the van, already likes this parade because "two nice young ladies," Ruthie says, have come up to offer them free cider and donuts. "It's a children's parade," Ruthie observes. "I'd give it a nine, wouldn't you, Esther?"
"Yes," agrees Esther. "The floats are very good. What do you think, Mary? Nine or 10?"
"Eight," declares Mary, who has seen more parades than her sisters-in-law. "They didn't have enough bands at the beginning, and not enough music."
After the parade, the Murrays pack up the cycles and divert to the beach before they drive to Exeter, seven miles away. All five get out and scurry onto the sand in the peach light of sunset. They pick up rocks, chase the waves, and take pictures of each other. "I'm a rock collector," says Tara. "I collect stones and shells and mark down where I got them."
Then it's off to Exeter, with the heat blasting. In Exeter, there's no place to set up the van for the entourage, so the daughters unpack lawn chairs for their grandmother and the aunts, and set them up on a sidewalk. This is a nighttime parade. There's more spectacle: lights, bands throughout, a flatbed truck blasting fire from its roof-mounted exhaust pipes. When the Murrays reach the reviewing stand, the commentator picks on Don on his quadricycle.
"Isn't it amazing that guy can stay on that bike with four wheels?" he cracks. When Jannah jumps rope on her unicycle, the commentator barks, "I want to see Papa do that on his bike."
The entourage prefers the Exeter parade, even though this time they nearly froze watching.
"It moved fast, and I think everyone was more jovial. And the Murrays were followed by Clydesdales!" says Ruthie.
"This one was a 10," declares Mary.
After the parade, it's back in the van for a wild and woolly, after-hours driving tour of Exeter's historic spots.
Don, at the helm, needs directions. "I have to get my bearings on the map," says Tara. "I'm confused. Does anyone have the flashlight?"
Reading from the light of street lamps, Tara points out Colonial residences, like the Sullivan Sleeper House, now an inn. "They're the ones who wouldn't let us in," Tara points out.
"We could knock on the door," Jannah suggests slyly. "Pretend we set up a tour."
We pass the First Parish Meeting House and Phillips Exeter Academy, but nobody pays much attention as Tara and Jean read aloud about them. Everyone gropes around in the dark, searching for the flashlight. Jannah climbs over the back of one seat, then another, crouches in the foot well in front of her aunts, and fumbles for it. "All I feel is a bunch of legs," she says.
"You might be able to see better from here," Tegan suggests to Jannah, and the two trade, vaulting over the seat backs.
Tegan settles down, then gasps. "I just want to say," she announces, "Tara has been sitting on a flashlight." She hands it to her mother, who holds it up: big, red, and metallic.
"Boy," Jean says. "I guess unicycling in the cold can really make you numb."
Jannah settles back into her seat, humming "Chattanooga Choo-Choo."
"Exeter was founded by John Wheelwright and Anne Harrington," Jean says. "Was it Anne? Anyway, they were kicked out of Massachusetts for being heretics."
Once again, we find ourselves on a street we shouldn't be on. Tara wants us to see the Giddings Tavern, site of the Mast Tree Riot, even though noone is sure why there was a riot about masts.
"One way, do not enter," Don reads off a street sign.
"Go anyway!" Tara insists. Don refuses, and takes another route.
"We never get lost," Mary asserts.
"We just get confused," concludes Jean.
Back on the highway, Tegan and Tara open a thermos and pass cups of hot chowder to the front of the van. It's past 8 on a cold night, after two parades and a whirlwind tour of seacoast New Hampshire. "You know the song we always sing when we're in the car?" Jannah asks, and starts singing.
"Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money. ..."
One by one, the rest of the family joins in.
"Maybe we're ragged and funny, but we'll travel along, singing our song, side by side."
Cate McQuaid is a freelance writer who lives in Haverhill.