Only a month away:
It's been so cold that I haven't thought much about the 4th of July, or summer, at all. Do you do something special on the 4th? To be honest, that clip is about as much of last year's parade as I saw. I'm not big on crowds or noise, but I can get into the festivities. I loved it as a child. We lived a short block from the parade route. I remember getting up very early and going out to the curb and trying to fall back asleep while saving our spaces. Never worked. I was always too excited to sleep.
And I remember the years when it became an all-night party. Drunks lined Main Street from dusk July 3rd until the parade was over the next day. It was insane.
I've avoided the fireworks, or at least the north side, because of the crowds and chaos.
This year the 4th is on a Friday, so I suspect it's going to be a long weekend for the police. Let's all be careful out there.
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As a kid, we always went to the parade as a family. I loved it. I continued the traditon with my children. Now that they are grown, there just doesn't seem to be anyone who wants to bother going.
The quality of the participants has waned: fewer floats, fewer marching bands, more fluff (seems to be a contagious problem in all areas of life lately.) Remember when the huge army planes would roar low over main street giving the crowd a rush?
I've been semi-watching it on Telecable the past couple of years. At least the chances of random gunfire from the crowd is less! I would consider going again if there were fun people to celebrate with.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier and cheaper to sit a politician on the backseat of a convertible and have him/her wave to the crowd than it is to build a float. A big part of it has to be the decline of industry in our town. Some of those companies used to sponsor fantastic floats. And I hear that drum and bugle corps have all but disappeared. We used to be the drum and bugle corp capital.
Yeah, the broadcast version doesn't capture all the excitement of actually being there. And as I said in the blog, I get enough of that in about 2-3 minutes. I do like to catch the fire engines and rescue vehicles in the pre-parade. I guess it's the kid in me who still thrills to all those sirens wailing.
We will never have the parades like there were in the past. OC is right, the number of industries that used to enter those fantastic floats have dwindled down to about 2 or 3. There are still the "patriotic" themes like the Marine Corp League float and the National Guard SPHs (heck the 440th is gone so no more C-130 fly-bys), it's become more of a line of advertising and useless politicians sucking up for your votes. Which reminds me, if Herb Kohl shows up he better be walking his ass the whole way. According to his latest form letter, he thinks it's better that you walk too and pay $4.00+ a gallon for gas, rather than to allow domestic drilling and utilizing OUR oil.
And I remember the years when it became an all-night party. Drunks lined Main Street from dusk July 3rd until the parade was over the next day. It was insane.
My brother-in-law lived on Main St and as you mentioned Drunks lined the street...we where part of them. On one of the fourths I was shooting bottle rockets down Main St. I would lay them on their side and let'em go, until the "long arm of the law" showed up. For some reason they couldn't see the humor in it.
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