Everyone Loves A Hurray!

Robin and I took our Grandson to the "Holiday Parade" yesterday afternoon. What was once a huge event in our town is now downsized and downtrodden. I couldn't help but think of the ghost of Christmas parades past..

It is now a holiday parade. God forbid we call it a Christmas parade. Someone might be offended. It takes place in the afternoon. It's too much of a bother to have it at night. The expense of police support would be too costly and who wants to see parade floats with lights anyway.

The main street has been widened and divided so we'll stop traffic on one side only and have a single lane parade, leaving the westbound travelers free to get to Publix or Walmart in case of emergency during the 25 minutes that it now takes to complete this festive event.

Lemme tell ya about what this parade was. It was called a CHRISTMAS PARADE. It was always at night, Friday night, in fact. The street was shut down for the evening. People lined up along both sides of the street along the the entire parade route. They had floats. A shitload of them. Lit up and noisy. They had celebrities (at least we thought Dr. Paul Bearer, the host of Saturday afternoons' "creature feature" was a big damn deal...he came in a big 'ol hearse and everything). They had 20 squads of shriners, fez's flyin' from the miniature model-t cars and motor cycles they drove. Every marching band in the area was there. Bag pipers. Leagues of boy scout/girl scout/cub scout/brownie troupes. Candy throwing clowns. Horses.

Here was the line-up from yesterday. . . 1/2 of one school marching band. 1 cub scout troupe. 1 baton/gymnast troupe. 1 fake rocket ship that the city council members rode in, all lined up in order of their importance, like sheep. They all had a weird upper lip thing going as if the rocket fumes were getting to them or the Mayor (her honor) who was placed at the nose of the ship, had farted.

2 garbage trucks. Yes, city garbage trucks..all washed and waxed. Nothing says Christ.. er, holiday like a big orange garbage truck with a standard sounding horn. 1 animal control truck. A few old clowns. Instead of random and liberal acts of candy giving, we instead had city workers (dressed like city maintenance workers, no Santa hats or anything) giving out... pencils and pens embossed with the city logo. What little candy was given out came at a price. For instance, tiny candy canes attached to a flyer for the cleaning service that threw a wreath on their van and paid to be there.

All participants were either:

A: geriatric (a square dance troupe whose ankles as a group were clearly swollen a mere block from the start)

B: 10 years old ("gymnasts" in floppy gardening gloves performing cartwheels every now and then)

In any case, neither age group were equipped to walk any distance. There was a garbage truck and about 7 minutes later there would be 6 ten year olds and a mom all wearing generic white cotton t's that said "SAVWOS...students against violence with other students". Merry Christmas, kids! Stop beating the crap out of each other.

Enough. Thanks to the city of having a holiday parade. You didn't have to have one, really. For a stretch of years you didn't. It wasn't in the budget.

It just doesn't measure up to the parades I remember.

My favorite memory of the downtown Christmas parade was getting to ride my horse with my family and friends, we mounted up early in the evening and rode 4 miles south along the railroad tracks (which is now the pinellas trail) through the parade along with the hundreds of other others and making it back to our pasture well past midnight.

We call our grandson 'Man (he's just a few months shy of being 3). We had hyped up the parade to 'Man all morning and he was stoked. He called it the "herrade" though.

"It's a parade honey, say PAW".
"pah".
"Now say RAID"
"rade"
"Now say PAW-RAID"
"herr-ade"

"That's right! Good job!"

I put him on my shoulders and we clapped for the kids and honored the flags (which I guess is another outdated notion of mine) and afterward as we walked to the car we asked "did you like the parade?".

He pulled the vendor-sponsored candy cane aside with his sticky little fingers and said:

"it was too much fun".

Parades are for kids. I hope he doesn't think the town holiday parade of 2043 is crappy compared to the one he saw yesterday.