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Show Parades just get longer every year ; (the editor 9 column J By MARC HADDOCK Is it just me, or are parades - getting longer and longer? And are the July mornings when they choose to hold these sidewalk endurance tests getting hotter, or is that just me, too? I'm really starting to worry about myself because what once was a simple pleasure, and one of the few around at that, isn't simple or pleasurable any more. I try to enjoy the passing spectacular spec-tacular displays of gawdiness and the rows and rows of eight-year-olds who make up a "precision" drill team in training. And I don't mind the young women who man the floats. But the heat gets to me. So does the sameness of everyone marching past, and marching past, and marching past. We've seen it all before. Ana, although I know this is going to make some people unhappy, we've usually seen it all before just a few minutes earlier in the same parade. When I was a kid the parades were shorter. In fact, the Montpelier parade that we saw every fall as part of the county fair was so short it would march up one side of Main Street, turn around, and march down the other side, just so everyone could see it twice and not feel like they had wasted the afternoon. rolled down the windows l(tl they were yelling alme,' " down. I peeked in the fancy ! mirror and saw the young k'. were riding the float hanj-)- I dear life, their carefully blowing in the artificial created as the float raw; Main Street. I applied the power btit mediately. I'll never forget that paras r I'm not the only one. But the parades I've seac: years, in Provo and Salt Lit American Fork lack thai t fa excitement. They just don'lh 1 down-home flavor of the ps m learned to enjoy as a chili j in I have to admit that thefcj ini parade is more enjoyable kj t others. At least it has the ads; n of featuring a large mm Co participants I recognize. So despite my negative It; p I'll be along the paraik i i Saturday. My kids will make? i and besides, 1 have to camera and look for picture P me, parades are a job, now. M But I have a hard times: 11 the "festive spirit" of ttieocts' And maybe that's why r seem to be too long, and toirj jj just not as much fun astkejf And even then it didn't last too long. The floats weren't as sophisticated, either, like many of those you'll see Saturday. Those were mom-and-pop floats, created by a small group of people with an urge to create who had access to too much crepe paper. They were pulled by fine automobiles, generously donated by the richest men in town for this purpose and freshly washed and waxed just to tow the homely creations. I even drove one when I was 'IB. (I'd been driving for almost two years. You get your license early in Idaho, and with all my experience -I had already rolled my mother's car the year before - I guess they felt like I could handle it. I was real flattered, and besides, everyone else was too busy to do it. ) It was a joint venture float between bet-ween my father's IGA grocery store and the next door clothing store called Allingers. We had built the float, and Jack Allinger donated his Lincoln to pull it. The car was awesome, even if it was the sixties. It was the first car I had ever been in that was air conditioned. con-ditioned. It was also my first experience ex-perience with power brakes. The young ladies on the float were having a rough ride indeed until I got the monster under control. The car started heating up before we pulled onto Main Street from Fifth Street. (There were 12 streets in town, we would go from Fifth to Twelfth, make a big U-turn and come back to Fifth again.) I had never been a car that heated up before', but I could tell things weren't right when steam started coming up from under the hood. Someone told me to race the engine, which at the time made no sense at all. But I did, and things cooled down right away. Those parades would speed up or stop at a moment's notice, and I remember trying to catch up with the entry ahead of me only to hear some screaming as if from far away. The noises were coming from the bystanders as well, and when I |
