Parades and State Fairs

The thought for this chilly day is ‘Parade’.

We celebrate a presidential inauguration with a parade. Macy’s has a parade to celebrate Broadway shows and shopping for Santa Clause. Sport teams win and everyone takes off work to see a parade of waving players and beer trucks. Returning soldiers get parades. Drunks in New Orleans get an annual parade. St. Patrick gets a parade. Even the LGBTQ get parades.

Holidays, like Forth of July, were celebration with a walk down Main Street. There would be the high school marching band goofy military rip-out uniforms, there would be girls wearing boots and short skirts waving flags or twirling batons, there would be the local American Legion veterans wearing boy scout caps with buttons and badges carrying flags and WWI rifles, there would be big shiny convertibles donated by the local dealerships with public officials no one had ever seen or pretty girls in prom gowns wearing a tiara and carrying a bouquet and wearing a sash donating her as Miss Pork & Beans (or whatever was popular), and there maybe some flatbed 18-wheelers decorated in crape paper with waving kids on top from the local 4-H club or Future Business Leaders of America proceeded by motorized or horse mounted police.

The parade would go from the Piggly Wiggly to the Toot & Tell-It with a line of people on both sides of the street sitting in lawn chairs, waving flags and cheers while being fed by wandering venduers selling popcorn and candy apples.

I personally have never walked in a parade, but I have been in several marathons. A marathon is just a fast parade. Then there are car races that are real fast parades that just go round and round in the same direction.

That is one thing about a parade. They don’t turn around and go back.

When the circus would come to town, they would parade the elephants up to the big tent from the train station. It was a good promotional event (if you didn’t mind the smell). I guess elephants can fit in the backseat of Studebaker.

Which brings up the thought of another old fashion event….the State Fair.

The county fair used to be a place for the farmers to show their best crops and livestock. There was music and dancing and churches would serve dinners. It was an event the whole community could gather and was normally had once a year.

Now the State Fair (or in my case, the Commonwealth Fair) would come to town, stay for a week, and then move onto another town. They set up at the racetrack just east of town. There were twirling rides and a Ferris wheel and lots of barkers showing everything from a fat bearded woman to Siamese twins to some Negro dressed in a grass skirt with his hair frizzed and a bone in his nose to dwarfs. Chain-linked fencing surrounded the tents and sawdust was put on the ground as a pathway for the wandering kids spending all their allowance. Crappy food was supplied from roach coaches to make the dredge parade of desperate city folk looking for freaks and creepy excitement plausible.

Perhaps as this holiday season gets underway with the wonder of why people still have headstones in their front yards and giant spiders hanging off their walls, haven’t folks realize we just got another hour to waste our time?

What!?! You read this.