Parade Ready: Candy Crush

Parade Ready

A few years ago, two of my daughters participated in a “summer cheer clinic.”

(“Summer Cheer Clinic” defined: The high school cheerleaders need new uniforms, so let’s get a bunch of kindergartners-through-third-graders to cough up $30 a person for two cheer lessons and a t-shirt.) The clinic culminated in the children showing off their newly-learned cheer moves in a parade that celebrated the local flora and fauna.

One of the things I find fascinating about being an American is the way that communities can turn the most mundane things into a reason to invite the world to come visit and join in celebrating the local banalities.

Work with me here to help prove my point: Get online and search the following:

“Turnip Parade”
“Lentil Festival”
“Potatofest”
“Chicken Wing Festival”
“Couscous Parade”

Let me know what you find.

Anyway, as I watched my girls, dressed up in $30 T-shirts celebrating this year’s participation in the local fauna-flora fest, I was reminded of parades that I had participated in years before.

Now, before I get too far, I need to point out that my ex-wife holds the family parade-participation record, because, thanks to some persuasive campaigning by a friend in junior high, she was a member of Seattle’s All-City Band while she was in, (and after she graduated from) high school. 

However, I’m not her, and thus I am unqualified to write about her experiences, bizarre though they may have been. Since the dissolution of our marriage, I find it unlikely that I will be able to manipulate her to share some of her experiences, although, I suppose it's not impossible, since she was a victim of persuasion to get her into the program in the first place.

When I was a kid in the Cub Scouts, we participated in a parade in a the idyllic, small Seattle community called Ballard. (Perhaps "i-DULL-ic" is a more accurate description.)

Ballard, as a community is best known for its large contingent of Northern European (Scandinavian) stock and its “UFF DA” bumper stickers. (Some cities have “Chinatowns,” Seattle has “Norwaytown”.)

So anyway, we the Bobcats, Wolves and Bears (and a few WeBeLos) participated in this Ballard parade touting the local flora or fauna. In this case, I think it was something like “Lutefisk Fest” or “Lute-a-fest”. 

This, I admit is extrapolation from what little I know of Norse stereotypes and tastes. 

Our job, so far as I can tell, was to be a uniform ocean of navy blue and gold (with a few checkerboard green and red for the WeBeLos,) thus creating a Cub Scout “presence” in the parade. In modern terms we would have been “raising awareness.”

Ultimately, the parade experience boiled down to dodging the deluge of hard (hence painful) butterscotch and “root beer barrel” candies that were thrown out by the cheerleaders behind us, while managing to catch the softer (and tastier) chocolate and caramel ones.

The parade was very long, especially since we didn’t really didn’t know what we were doing, but because we were at the front (read: ADHD and general youthful energy) we were one of the first groups to finish the route.

After we finished, (I had collected five “Krackel” bars, four Snickers miniatures, three (rejected) Hershey’s Special Darks and two welts (from the butterscotch candy thrown by the All-Metro League Cheerleading Pom-Pon Queen,)) the Cubs and WeBeLos were dispersed to the custody of their various parents, guardians and parole officers.

My mother (Den mother extraordinaire for Pack 123-Crown Hill Elementary School (1919-1979 R.I.P,.)) my sister (frequent victim of my youthful shenanigans) and I adjourned to our bright orange 1974 VW Microbus.

Mom was a careful driver, but because the parade had affected traffic flow, making navigation of the streets trickier than usual. After a series of wrong turns and other mishaps, my mom--for reasons that elude me--wound up driving in the parade.

She made a turn, then another turn, made a sound that went something like “ACK!” and BAM! we suddenly were a part of the parade, this time toward the end, tucked in behind Shriners driving their stunt go-carts and the 1978 Parade Lutefisk Princess.

Now, while this would have been embarrassing enough, to suddenly merge back into the parade again, it was at this point (Mom and I were waving, acting as though we were supposed to be there) that my hapless little sister was fiddling with her door handle and …

…fell out of the van!

Luckily, she didn’t just fall out into a heap on the ground. You see, she managed to hang onto the plastic door handle as she poured out. So now our orange microbus had reentered the parade with a five year old (Norwegian-looking) blonde girl dangling from the passenger door, her feet barely reaching the pavement, keeping pace with the parade. This was accomplished, all the while dodging Shriners in their stunt go-carts, and being pummeled by butterscotch and root beer candies.

After a few blocks of this unusual display, Mom finally got off the parade route and we extricated my sister from the hazards of airborne Star Brite Mints and root beer barrels. After a quick check to make sure the candy-borne pounding was not life-threatening, we adjourned to "Dick's," one of the local hamburger shops for the healing powers that come from a cheeseburger, hand-cut fries and a chocolate milkshake.

All these memories come back to me as I watched my girls marching with the local high school cheerleaders. They have some sort of cheer espousing the virtues of flora and fauna.

So, almost thirty years after the Lute-a-Fest debacle, I marched with the members and employees of the local library, a placed a few groups behind the junior cheer clinic, following a mule-drawn cart that was either hawking the importance of organic growing practices, or was just there for show behind a group of young equestrian riders. 

One of the unusual side effects of the equestrian display was a large quantity of Organic Material on the street. (Either way, it was very important to pay heed to the unspoken message of “watch your feet.”)

My job was to “distribute candy to parade-goers without actually throwing it. Apparently there had been enough "Candy-Injury" lawsuits in the intervening decades from my youthful experiences.

 Each piece of chocolate candy was glued to a strip of paper that had some interesting factoid about the importance of community library systems. Despite prohibitions to the behavior, I was hurling miniature chocolate bars wrapped with bits of Library-related trivia to the crowd. It seemed that the paper tails actually gave them some distance.

Here’s a bit of next-generation library trivia: Did you know that a father of five could throw a Hershey’s Miniature chocolate bar through an open third-story apartment window? (Or a closed second-story apartment window?)

(I blame the mule.)

Once our part of the parade was finished, we rounded up the kids and headed home.

Luckily, we walked, rather than drove.

*                 *                   *                *                *                       *                        *                     *

Please visit my novel's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Phoeni...

Phoenix Flight: Rise of the Phoenix Flight: Phoenix Flight Book One