Mummers

The 112th Mummers Parade, the nation's oldest continuous folk event, with up to 10,000 participants, will begin at 9:45 a.m. Sunday near Broad Street and Washington Avenue. It will showcase four divisions: the Comics, Fancies, Fancy Brigades, and String Bands. City officials say they worked with Mummers officials on improvements to a new judging location. The end of the route will be altered to accommodate continuing renovations to City Hall's Dilworth Plaza, pushing the parade judging area between 15th and 16th Street on John F. Kennedy Boulevard, across from the Fairmount Park Welcome Center at JFK Plaza.

AS THE Quaker City String Band rehearsed the wooden soldier march of its latest routine on a chilly December evening, Jim Fox Jr. blended right into the horde of saxophonists playing through "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home. " But despite being one alto among many, Fox is responsible for an outsized portion of the cacophony being raised on the second floor of the venerable Mummers band's South Philly clubhouse. Probably half of the Quaker City saxophonists wouldn't be there on New Year's Day if it weren't for Fox. That's literally the case for two of them, Fox's college-age sons, who are carrying on the family tradition.

THE ORDER of march for the 2012 Mummers String Bands. The first band steps off at Broad and Oregon at 10 a.m. (Number in parentheses is how the band placed last year.) 1. Duffy String Band (13) Captain: Ted Kudrick Theme: All Decked Out A full deck of cards comes to life featuring Jacks, Queens, Kings, Aces and Jokers. Luck and sleight of hands are plentiful. Duffy knows when to hold 'em and when to show 'em. Captain Ted Kudrick plays the King of Spades. 2. Fralinger String Band (4)

  Most days, Jeff Nash, a lawyer and Camden County freeholder, wears a suit and tie. On Sunday, he'll dress as an octopus, with eight black tentacles stretching from his hooded sweatshirt and with his face and shoes painted gold. Nash, who is also vice chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority, is part of an intermittent Mummers comic brigade known as the Golden Schleppers. The group of South Jersey politicians, county, and municipal workers and their friends came together in 1990 but hasn't participated for 10 years since a key member died, Nash said.

Dennis Pellegrino has a win streak to protect in the Mummers Parade - nine first-place prizes in the club-captain category and counting. He hopes his oldest child's idea for a theme will keep the tradition alive. Nearly four years ago, the day after a parade, Nicholas gave his father a sketch of a pirate ship on graph paper, complete with dimensions, a treasure chest, and, of course, pirates. The child, now 13, has for several years begun thinking ahead to the next New Year's Day the day after each parade.

This year, like every year, Tim Luko, 58, a member of the Satin Slippers Fancy Brigade, paid a visit to the preserved body of St. John Neumann, the patron saint of Mummers, which is enshrined on the ground floor of St. Peter's Church at Fifth and Girard. "It's overwhelming," he said moments after standing before the revered saint's 5-foot-2 body, encased in a glass casket. And never more so than Sunday, at the 29th annual Mummers Mass, during which his son, also named Tim, just back from Afghanistan, led a procession in which his son Tim, 5, gently placed a pair of golden slippers - a pair of spray-painted kids' Velcro sneakers, to be exact - on the gleaming marble altar.

OVER THE PAST several weeks PennDOT has begun a project along I-95 in the Pennsport community in which they are redoing the drainage coming off of I-95 down into the community. The problem is that the water/runoff that is coming out of these drains is not just rainwater: There is trash and debris floating amid the water runoff - the water is just spewing out all over the open public space. The downspout pipes are extremely large and are no longer attached to a receiving drain.

The SugarHouse Casino will be the exclusive presenting sponsor of the 2012 Philadelphia Mummers Parade and Fancy Brigade Finale, the casino said. In return for an undisclosed amount of money, SugarHouse will receive prominent name placement with the Mummers. The casino's Sugar Express shuttle bus will offer rides for parade attendees. It is the first time that the casino has participated with the Mummers Parade. The 112th parade is to be broadcast from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on PHL17.

James J. "Zapper" Dougherty, 64, of South Philadelphia and Wildwood Crest, a retired longshoreman and former Mummer, died of a heart attack Wednesday, Oct. 26, at Methodist Hospital. For 40 years, Mr. Dougherty was a longshoreman on the Delaware waterfront, where he earned the nickname "Zapper. " He retired in 2008. Mr. Dougherty grew up in South Philadelphia, strutting up Broad Street with Mummers comic divisions on New Year's Day. Later, he marched with fancy brigades until the mid-1990s.

Lawrence Crovetti, arrested last month on charges of promoting prostitution at a South Philadelphia Mummers clubhouse, was ordered to stand trial Tuesday. Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni ruled after a preliminary hearing during which two police officers testified that they were propositioned for sex by 10 women while working undercover in the Downtowners Fancy Brigade clubhouse, Second Street and Snyder Avenue. Defense attorney George Henry Newman declared that Crovetti, 65, of Feasterville, was innocent.