FARMINGTON – His favorite thing about portraying Chester Greenwood is “bringing back the history of a local man who has put Farmington on the map,” said Clyde Ross.

Ross has played the inventor every Chester Greenwood Day since 1986, missing only last year due to back surgery.

Greenwood was a common man with high ideals and principles who worked to make life easier for the common man, he said.

Greenwood, who is said to have created earmuffs when he was 15 years old, received a United States patent for his Champion Ear Protectors in 1877. But he invented many other things, without receiving a patent, to make life easier for local farmers, according to Ross, who visits local schools to teach children about their heritage. He ardently feels that maintaining a sense of history and heritage is important.

“If we don’t bring it out once in awhile, we might forget it,” he said.

There really isn’t anything difficult about playing Greenwood, he said.

Saturday morning around 8 a.m. he will visit Jackie Tardiff at her barbershop on Broadway to have a “chia pet” dark mustache affixed to his upper lip. He’ll sport a walking coat and bowler hat and, of course, a pair of earmuffs – an original pair, he said, made before 1937 and donated by the late Lucille Fronk.

His duties will begin shortly thereafter when he will take “a tour around town,” waving to passers-by and exchanging greetings. He will end his promenade at the W.G. Mallett School, where he will visit with prepping parade participants.

He will ride a float in the parade with the town manager and a member of the Greenwood family, Isabelle Greenwood, a granddaughter.

The hardest thing about his role, he said, is the unpredictability of the weather.

“There’ll always be wind coming right up Main Street,” he said. But he’s an outdoors person and dresses for it, he said.

As of Wednesday night, the National Weather Service is predicting a sunny and cold day, Saturday, with temperatures in the low 30s.