I’ve been a sucker for parades, going back to my childhood.
When I was a young boy, it seemed like there was a parade in my hometown of Tupelo every couple of months and attendance seemed like some sort of civic duty. Everybody in town seemed to show up.
There were homecoming parades, Veterans Day parades, Flag Day parades, Thanksgiving parades, Christmas parades and, the biggest of all, the Fair Day parade.
The Fair Day parade was held on a Friday in September as served as the official opening of the Mississippi-Alabama Fair & Dairy Show.
Fair Day was a holiday in Tupelo. All the kids got out of school and we watched from the sidewalks as marching bands from schools from three or four surrounding counties blared their way down Main Street to the Fairgrounds, where the parade ended. When the parade ended, the fair was officially open.
A kid who planned carefully could eat hamburgers and cotton candy and enjoy rides and booths and exhibits all day on $5 or $10. I tended to splurge, so by the afternoon, my pockets were empty, and I spent the rest of the day looking at pigs and goats and chicken in the livestock area, which you could do for free. That wasn’t as much fun as riding the Tilt-A-Whirl, but it was still far better than being stuck in a classroom, though.
Now, it seems parades are fewer — maybe two or three per year, tops.
And while I have long since lost the sense of wonder children feel during parades, I still enjoy them and rarely miss an opportunity to attend, either as a participant or a spectator.
In Arizona, I once volunteered to help with the huge Phoenix St. Patrick’s Day Parade and was assigned to the “float” for the Arizona Bassett Hound Rescue Group, which remains one of my more memorable parade experiences.
The “float” was really nothing more than a pick-up truck with banners feature the group’s logo on either side. The basset hounds walked behind the truck, in something that vaguely resembled parade formation.
My job was to watch the dogs as they waddled along the parade route and notice when any of the dogs showed signs of distress.
It should be noted that basset hounds have many exceptional qualities — including their irresistibly odd cuteness — but stamina is not one of them. Within a couple of city blocks, half of the dozen or so dogs had been lifted up into the back of the pickup.
A third of the way through the route, there were no walkers, just a pick-up bed full of pooped pups, most of them sleeping (basset hounds are skilled snoozers).
During those 12 years in Arizona, I also rode horseback during the town of Gilbert’s annual Rodeo Days parade, trying to goad a weary trail horse over a painted stripe on the pavement. It is a curious thing: A horse will walk through almost anything on a rugged wilderness trail, but when confronted with a painted stripe on a road, he’ll stop dead cold, as if that paint is going to somehow leap off the pavement and attack him.
And when one horse stops, so do all the others. Finally, one rider manages to coax his horse over the stripe and, seeing that the horse has not met some disaster, the other horses will follow and continue along the route — until the next stripe, of course, when the procession stops again as the horses calculate their odds of survival.
During my 14 years on the Mississippi Coast, I attended innumerable Carnival parades, (only tourists call them Mardi Gras parades, since Carnival season is celebrated over 12 days and only parades held on Fat Tuesday itself are technically Mardi Gras parades), both in New Orleans and along the Coast.
I was always a spectator, though, and never had the opportunity ride on any of those magnificent floats. What distinguishes Carnival parades from all others is that everybody seems to be intoxicated — the float riders, spectators, food vendors, marching bands — everybody but the cops (although I’m not entirely sure about that). The parades stagger down the streets like Bourbon Street tourists after last call.
Since moving back to Mississippi four years ago, I’ve ridden in several Christmas parades, most recently on Monday in Starkville. The weather — the parade began with a misty rain — kept some folks away, which means there were a lot of gaps in spectators along the route.
The other thing that distinguishes the Starkville parade is that it often stops as floats try to negotiate some of the more narrow turns.
These stops always seem to happen at places were there are only a few spectators. You can only wave and say “Merry Christmas!” to the same group of two or three spectators for so long.
What follows in an awkward two or three minutes where you are staring at the same people, people you don’t know, and they are staring blankly back at you.
It’s kind of like getting stuck in elevator with two or three strangers: “How are you?…. Fine…And you?” Silence. Somebody pushes a button. Everybody stares at the door.
Eventually, the parade begins to crawl along the route again. Monday, as we were creeping along Main Street, I noted a guy in a gray Ole Miss sweatshirt. “Lost a bet, huh?” I shouted out to him. He was not amused. He just frowned at me, so I tried to point out the man to a cop and have him arrested for indecent exposure, but apparently, the cop didn’t hear me.
The atmosphere at our Christmas parades are festive and amicable, but somehow restrained. No one will mistake them for the Krewe of Zulu parade in New Orleans or even the green-tinted booziness of St. Patrick’s Day parade in Phoenix, but they are happy events.
I’m looking forward to riding on The Dispatch float in the Columbus Christmas Parade on Dec. 12. I hope the weather is agreeable and the turnout is good. Big crowds make great parades.
Look for me. I’ll be the guy making inappropriate comments when the parade grinds to a halt.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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