By Daris HowardGazette ContributorTwo things happened that year that changed everything: my cousins came up from California, and it rained on July 3rd. When it’s hay hauling season nothing interferes, and we had never taken the Fourth of July off before. But a person can’t haul hay until it is thoroughly dry. Thus, for the first time, my dad declared it an unofficial holiday.
We decided to take our cousins to the community celebration in Ashton. I have always liked small towns and Ashton was one of my favorites. It had a main street about six blocks long, unless you don’t count the grain elevators, which would deduct two blocks. There were a couple of small handmade furniture stores, a theater, some craft stores, one café, and a bar. That was pretty much the main street.
Shopping in Ashton back then consisted of one all-purpose gas station-grocery-hardware store. We are not talking WalMart; we are talking it only carried one variety of anything and, if a person didn’t like it, well, that was just too bad.
In Ashton, everybody knew everybody and who they didn’t know they were related to. There were no stop lights or crosswalks; Ashton didn’t need them. Why, there wasn’t that much traffic and people crossed the road anywhere they darn well pleased, even if there was traffic coming, which there almost never was.
The parade started right at ten with a police car. This was not because it made it look official, but because people stood in the middle of the street and visited, and the police car was to get them to move to the sidewalks. Sometimes they still didn’t move and the police officer would give his siren a blast. Then the people would yell, “All right, Thompson, don’t get shovey! Don’t get shovey!”
My cousins were from California, and in their depravity, had never seen a real home-town parade. Blair, who was closest to my age, let me know that this definitely was no Rose Parade. I didn’t know what a Rose Parade was, but it sounded boring and I didn’t like him bad mouthing my home town.
As the parade went on, people would stroll back and forth from one side of the street to the other between the floats. Blair had the nerve to suggest that it wasn’t proper, but my dad said, “A parade’s only as good as the number of friends you can meet.”
There were the veterans carrying the flag, a band that played an almost-recognizable tune, the pretty drill team girls, which my older brothers especially liked, and then the floats. One of the drivers had forgotten to drop his food off at the baked food sale. He just parked in the middle of the street, got out, and took his food to the table. Someone yelled, “I hope you weren’t the one that baked that, Joe!” and another called out “Hey, Joe, what’s the problem? Won’t your Chevy go? Maybe you should get a Ford!”
There were politicians in big cars with signs on the side that my dad told me all said, “vote for Dufus” no matter who was in the car.
I especially enjoyed the horses and the farm equipment. Blair had the audacity to announce that it was unconventional to have farm equipment in a parade. I just rolled my eyes and wondered what planet he was from. There were quite a few other things, but the parade only lasted about 20 minutes. “Is that it?” Blair gasped. “No,” someone answered, “just wait.” Soon it came back from the other direction.
Blair laughed, “Great! We get to see it twice just to make it long enough to be counted as a parade. And there are no stars or anything.”
I was ticked off. “You want stars, I’ll show you stars” I growled, grabbing him by the nap of the neck, but my dad interceded me. About then the parade ended and my dad took us to buy a hamburger and a root beer float.
It wasn’t long before I grew up and was gone away for a lot of years to New York, working on a graduate degree, and marrying a wife from Los Angeles. The summer I returned I took my family to the Ashton parade. As I ran into friends there, for the first time in a long time, I felt I was truly home. My dad was older and walked slowly with his cane. It was now me who was buying hamburgers and root beer floats for my parents and my own children. I talked to lots of people I hadn’t seen in years.
The funny thing is, I can’t remember much about that parade, but I guess it doesn’t matter. After all, “A parade’s only as good as the number of friends you can meet.” (Daris Howard, award-winning, syndicated columnist, playwright, and author, can be contacted at daris@darishoward.com; or visit his website at http://www.darishoward.com)
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