Upcoming parade
(Note, these are not my actual friends. I just found this image on the Internet. Any similarity in appearance to my actual friend Kevin is completely coincidental).
Friday (April 27) marks the deadline to apply for the May 5 spring parade. This year’s theme is celebration of diversity. Last year Tommy and I were invited to ride on a convertible fire truck driven by Robert Fickert.
For years we’ve been joking about entering the parade and riding in the Sow There! purple dirigible, but have not quite gotten it together.
One year while we were camping at Lake Almanor a bunch of my goofy friends were joking that we should enter the Chester Fourth of July parade. For some reason, a bunch of the guys in our group thought it was fun every once in a while to wear kilts. We also had a scotch tasting party but that’s a completely different story.
My friend Kevin said we should enter the parade, have all the men wear kilts and march as the Butte Jacobite Society. Instead of bagpipes, the men would carry stuffed cats under their arms.
We all thought it was hilarious to laugh about, especially in Chester where most of the floats in the parade include fire engines and the various chapters of Clampers.
One of my favorite memories of Chico Parades was when Leify was about 5 years old. He wanted to get a good view of the parade, so we climbed up into one of those gnarled trees that used to be on the west edge of city plaza. I think was a camelia, but that was a while ago. Naturally I climbed into the tree with him. We ended up missing most of the parade because it was such a hoot to climb a tree.
There should decidedly be more tree climbing in adulthood, or more 5-year-olds to pal around with.