August 27, 2005
Back to School Parade
Every year, my neighborhood has a Back to School Parade for the city schools. I've never attended before, normally I experience the parade from the comfort of my house (sometimes even my bed if I sleep in). My street is not on the parade route, so the experience is limited to hearing the drums in the distance and saying, "Huh? Who's playing drums?"
I figured this year I should go. Usually there're marching bands and it's quite a big thing, it certainly always sounds like it goes on forever. Unfortunately, it rained all morning and this year's parade was somewhat abbreviated even though the rain stopped by the time the parade began.
We had some hopeful politicians, a child beauty pageant winner, the university police, and a van marked "K-12 Mobile Command Center." The parade included some classic (and not so classic) cars. The Mustang owners all turned out and a few other models were represented.
Most of the kids were walking. Some of them helped out corporate sponsors.
Church youth groups participated. These kids were singing.
And the parade wound up with a couple mounted police and an unmarked police car.
I checked the time stamps on my pictures and found that the whole parade, start to finish, only took about ten minutes to pass the corner where I was standing. No bands. Some of the other spectators were teachers and exchanged greetings with the students by name. While I'm happy enough not to live on Broad Street (lots of traffic), today I envied the people who were able to watch from their front porches. Maybe next year the weather will be more compliant and we'll have the full size parade.
282 words | August 27, 2005 05:26 PM | Shutterbug