The 4th of July is always a fun time around Arlington. One of the highlights is the parade down our main street, Olympic Avenue. Two years ago I actually participated, having been assigned the task of carrying a dignitary (which in the end didn’t work out, so I carried Nicholas!) Last year they didn’t really have a parade down Olympic, since it was all torn up being resurfaced. They had a parade, but it was elsewhere and we didn’t go.
The parade seemed to suffer a bit from this disruption, and was much smaller this year than previous years. Additionally our enjoyment of it was reduced quite a bit… let me explain.
Above is a photo of an old Public Utility District truck, which always participates in the parade. Note the child on the right side of the frame.
Another tradition of the parade is that parade participants throw candy out to the curb and small children pick it up. In fact Nick and I did this from the Jaguar in 2006. When our kids were little it was their highlight. However everyone stayed seated on the curb and no views were obstructed. This year, every kid under the age of eight just stood up, about 5 feet off the curb and ran around picking up candy and screaming ‘Mine!’ like the seagulls in “Finding Nemo”. Needless to say, it sort of ruined the parade experience for me. Where are these childrens’ parents??
I was able to grab maybe three photos between dashing, screaming brats.
The old tractors are always a hit. This photo shows them just coming around the bend at the start of the parade. There were about 30 of them, most pre-war… but other than this photo, I only caught small glimpses of them between scurrying rugrats.
One tractor was towing a hit-and-miss engine for driving pumps. It had this fascinating water cooling systems with a mini cascading cooling tower sort of apparatus. Too bad the cavorting crumb-crunchers prevented a good photo.
This guy was my hero:
For one thing he didn’t have any candy to throw, handling that old Harley was enough! But he also had a toothless smile, and a menacing-to-children look about him so all the fearful parental units recalled their misbehaving spawn from the street when he came around. That old Harley wobbled down Olympic and the sea of little monsters parted as if he were Moses. I propose that next year he be nominated the Grand Marshall!
The bluetooth headset does sort of destroy the vintage look he’s got going though.
So I would have liked to take lots of photos of the old cars and whatnot, but instead I ended up with shots like this:
next time try standing 🙂
Jerome
Well.. parade protocol has kids in front, sitting on the ground, older kids & adults sitting on the curb (where I was) then a row of other folks, traditionally the elderly, but more common just fat lazy folks sitting in chairs, then a row of folks standing in the back… usually teenagers who are too cool to be seen sitting with their parents…. or really tall adults with kids on their shoulders. If I stood I would have blocked the view of all behind me.
your very regimented there aren’t you! – here we all just stand at the front! ha
Jerome
Well, it works. Until the unruly brats showed up.
See? Tractors are *cool.* Chicks dig’em, guys dig’em, they’re easy to work on..and they’re *completely* w/o pretense. I am in the process of restoring an early 20s John Deere hit-n-miss, exactly like this one: http://www.smokstak.com/image/articles/ice_cream.jpg
Why I’m looking for a good vintage tractor!