I've ranted about it before. This year, I've got a couple of additional rants to add to the mix. As if it weren't bad enough that the parade is on a Tuesday night instead of a Saturday afternoon, this year they decided to move the start time back. As in, later in the evening. What good is it to have a parade in the dark? You can't see anything. There were a few floats with lights on them, but the rest of the parade was just shadows passing in the night. These are the best of the pictures I was able to get.
Not only that, they changed the route of the parade, and didn't tell anyone. I've heard that there were lots of people lined up along the old route because they didn't know. They missed it all. Not that there was much to miss. Most of our parade is just cars with hand lettered signs on them. Anyway, they didn't just change the route, they shortened it considerably. I'll bet the whole route wasn't much more than 200 yards long.
Then ending of the route didn't seemed planned out very well either. It's like the entries got to the end and just stopped. Now I know all parades are start and stop, but this one was getting really bogged down. There were times when it seemed to take 15 minutes for the parade to move 10 feet. To add to the confusion, when the cars and the few floats they had were finished, they didn't exit along a different street. They were trying to drive back up the parade route, clogging things up even further.
I'm sorry. I'm not wanting to sound like a Grinch, and I love a parade, but this town has got the dumbest Christmas parade I've ever seen. This year it was worse. I noticed that there was not the festive attitude that there has been in years past. People seemed bored, restless, and frustrated. I know I was. The highlight of the parade is the High school band.
This year there were 4 bands in the parade. The Junior high band led off, as they usually do. I did get a video of them, but it's so dark you can't see anything. So this is the video from last year.
After they had passed, boredom began to set in, especially as slowly as the parade was moving. About a gazillion cars with hand lettered signs taped to the side passed by, the Holmes Community College band arrived. At this point, the parade really bogged down. They stood in the same place long enough to play their parade piece four times, plus all the intermittent drum cadence.
Finally, the parade moved again, albeit very slowly. A gazillion more cars with hand lettered signs taped to the side passed by, then off in the distance, the sound of the High School band could be faintly heard approaching. People began to sit up. The mood began to lighten. Excitement began to build. They were here! The Grenada High School Marching Band!!!
(Video from 2006--this year's was far too dark!)
Cheering, filming, marching along beside them. You'd have thought it was a movie star.
Now, normally, the band is the last thing in the parade. Well, the band, then Santa Claus then the horses and that's it. This year they put the band in the middle of the parade. Since they are what everyone comes to see, once the band had passed by, the crowd broke up pretty quickly. But there was more to the parade. A gazillion more cars with hand lettered signs taped to the side passed by, then one more band marched.
It was the band from McClain high school in a near by town. I felt sorry for them, because by the time they came down the route, most everybody had left already. I could see some of them looking around like, "Where is everybody?". They were small, but were pretty good. They did the dancing style marching and really put on a show.
That was it for this year's parade. Next year, I hope somebody wises up and realizes that a parade is only good if you can see it and they'll hold it during daylight hours. I say that every year, and they still haven't done it.
Oh well,
Merry Christmas!
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