Drove over to Baraga
for the parades today. The kids' parade at noon, the other at 3:00 p.m.
I drove off Highway 41 onto Superior Avenue, past the Pettibone plant. I wanted to park on a side street not too far from the action, but I found the side streets blocked off. There's not a single street that goes to the right and I couldn't turn left to get off what would be the parade route.
Nothing much was happening yet. It was still early, not even 11:00 a.m. When I got to the far end of Superior Avenue where it intersects with M-38, the street was barricaded. I had to head back the way I'd come to find a way off this merry-go-round.
The people were starting to gather in small clumps and one came out into street to yell at me - "Didn't ya see the barricade!" He didn't say it like it was a question.
Yeah, I saw the barricade, buddy, that's why I turned around. I didn't say that outloud. I just kept driving. Who died and left him king anyway?
When I finally did find a street into town that wasn't barricaded, the other end of Superior Avenue still had not been blocked off. People were still driving onto the parade route. I hope the fellow was yelling at them, too - "Hey, didn't ya see the barricade we haven't put up yet!"
Like a tourist I drove in the out drive at the Baraga School parking lot. "He's from Wisconsin," people might say, "give him plenty of room." Actually, I didn't see the "Exit Only" sign until I returned to my car several hours later.
Walked down to the Armory with my lawn chair and notebooks. This was where participants in the parade would gather, and where the parade would start. I set my chair up on the sidewalk and worked on my notes for a bit. It was a beautiful day for a parade - blue sky and bright sun. Everything you'd want. Nothing much was happening at the Armory, but I could see the big overhead door on this end of the Pettibone factory was open. I figured some fellows at Pettibone were getting equipment gathered up for the parade.
Walked back up Superior Avenue when it started getting to be time for the kids' parade.
The kids were gathering behind two of Baraga's fire trucks. It was a swarm of kids in the street. Every kid in town? Every grin? Every pieces of red, white, and blue fabric in a five-county area? Seemed like it.
I put my chair in the shade of a tree and sat down. "Who's this little knucklehead here?" said a fellow who looked to me to be Indian.
"That's my helper," said the other fellow, who also looked to me to be Indian. The kid did not.
When the parade started, there was plenty of siren involved, of course. The fun of fire-crackers is the flash-boom. The fun of a parade is the sirens.
Three or four men stretched a rope across the street behind the firetrucks, to keep the kids back from them. Kids filled in behind the firetrucks as wide as the street, more than a block long, more than two blocks, even. It was more a mobbing than a parade, I'd say, but then I'm Germanic about how people ought to line up.
Everything that goes up must soon come down, so soon enough those kids who'd been in the parade were coming back past me, in no particular hurry, in no particular order. On the way back, though, maybe Mom had to carry both the little bike and the small child who rode it in the parade. The small child carried a helium balloon.
If you spend too much time trying to figure out which people here look Indian, and which people do not, you might go crazy. If there is any message I'm getting today, it's that we are all the same - we are community, us. That it doesn't matter who looks like what. That it's not us and them. Not Finns and Norwegians. Not whites and Indians. Us.
By 1:00 p.m. there were already three Pettibone machines in the back of the Armory parking lot, waiting for a parade to start. The Cary-Lift was in the front, the Extendo, the Speed Swing - all of them as bright yellow as the sun.
At the front of the parking lot, another machine. I can't read the name on it from here, but I can tell it's too long for "Terex."
Someone is practicing a patriotic song on a float with a big American flag made of red, white, and blue crepe paper. The girl is singing "God Bless America," yes.
A car drives into the parking lot with a "Re-elect Kissel" sign on it, and flags and red, white, and blue bunting. Lest we forget that the 4th of July is custom-made for politicians.
I saw boys in camouflage dress and with make-shift guns walking towards the parking lot. There were girls bouncing basketballs in the gravel near a purple and white float. Those are girls? - oh, it's both boys and girls bouncing basketballs.
Then the boys in camo are talking to the girls with the basketballs; they are getting to that age where they are actually starting to like talking to one another. And we know that soon it will get to be more than just talking.
To be continued....
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