October 7, 2006

• Here it is October, and I am still blogging about how I spent my summer! Considering that I am only covering the pleasant things and not talking about teaching all summer with a course overload, that says something about how busy it was, I think!

  In August, our community celebrated its sesquicentennial. That’s an awful word, isn’t it? Peter Noone appeared at the sesquicentennial in Blue Earth over the summer and I went down there to help with merchandise sales. He had a great time murdering that word before he finally came out with the correct pronunciation to the cheers of the crowd. Peter is quite a linguist, so I am sure that he was playing and that the word is not difficult for him to pronounce, but it was lots of fun to watch him. When he did get it right, he turned to the audience and said, “So, how many times in your life do you ever need that word, anyway? Once!!!!” That got an even bigger roar than murdering the word did!

  Anyway, back to my town’s sesquicentennial. One of our events was a parade. It was one of the best parades I have seen anywhere in recent years, and a truly remarkable one for a small town. I took over 100 pictures during the parade, so, even though I am only going to post a small number of them, this is going to be a long blog.

  People gather for parades early so they can get good seats. In our community, you can take your chairs and set them up where you want to be and go home. Your chairs will be perfectly safe. Still, it’s good to get there early so that you can visit with your friends. At this parade, the Community Band played before parade time. Note the girl in the lifeguard shirt. She was going to work when they finished playing.

  

  Here are Andy and Jake waiting for the parade to start.

  

  The VFW and American Legion presented the colors at the start of the parade.

  

  Most of the members of the VFW and American Legion are veterans of World War II and Korea, so they are not young anymore and may have trouble marching in parades. They still want to be involved, though, so they rode in this unit following the flags.

  

  The units in the parade were quite varied. They included clowns like this one:

  

  I was very intrigued with this unit. This is a real calliope. It has been a long time since I saw one of those. I liked the fact that it was blowing bubbles.

  

  A lot of the units represented the time that the town was founded. I liked this covered wagon:

  

  We were on the shady side of the street and it was fairly crowded by the time the parade started. If you look behind these unicyclists, you can see that the sunny side of the street was not as popular. I don’t think I could ride a unicycle, do you?

  

  There were many Shriners’ units in the parade. I don’t know about your community, but the Shriners really do a lot of good in Minnesota. They have a large crippled children’s hospital in St. Paul. No child who is a patient there ever receives a bill. The Shriners always look like they are having so much fun in parades. This motorcycle drill team’s stunts looked downright dangerous!

  

  At parades in our community, most of the units throw candy to the kids. Here is Jake out there grabbing his share.

  

  Here are some real Native American dancers. I am not really sure why they were there, since we do not really have much Native American history in this town. They were fun to watch, though.

  

  Of course, parades always have to have local dignitaries. These are Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus. The fellow with the beard is our good friend Pat.

  

  Dan even made the parade because he is the president of his Lion’s Club. The woman sitting with him is the president of my Lion’s Club.

  

  As I said, there were many Shriners’ units in the parade. They must have had at least 20 classic cars. This one was a beauty!

  

  Here is a cement truck that is, for some reason, decorated in honor of the Minnesota Gophers. I wondered if anyone ever noticed that the pictures on the truck are upside down?

  

  This is one of my favorite units. My camera did not cooperate when they were actually going by us, so I had to run a block over to catch them. This is our Sheriff’s Mounted Posse. They are in almost all parades in our area.

  

  And here is Jake at the end with his haul of goodies. It was better than Halloween!

  

  When we started home, we went through the parade startup area. The Gopher cement truck was still there and Andy could not resist taking this picture of Jake with the Gopher face on the front of the truck. It really is cute, I think.

  

  So, there you have a few highlights of a small town sesquicentennial parade. It was actually a much better parade than Blue Earth’s, and that is a much bigger town!

  • 8:56 pm
  • 26 Comments