A little ditty about Jack and the Chevy

or, I love a parade....

I marched in my very first parade ever last night. How did I manage to be almost 40 and never be in a parade? No band, no girl scouts, no softball, ..... etc. Just the way it is, I guess.

Every year on the Wednesday before Memorial Day our town holds a big parade (we have oh, about 12 fire trucks, it's madness....) with marching bands and so on.

My son's baseball team is sponsored by the town's youth council so all of the teams were asked to be a part of the parade. We live in a very old, historical town and so Memorial Day events are pretty much attended by the whole town. (good time for a crime spree, no?)

So I was nominated (by Mr. C) to walk with Dan, because Vioxx being off the market and all, it's just not a good idea for the Mr. to spend two hours walking down the middle of the road. I kid you not, it took forever to do this parade because we were near the end and we waited at various points on the route while every band and chorus did a song or two at the review stand. Halfway through I reeeeeeeeeeeally wanted a nice cold beer.

Before the parade I was standing with Son's coach who looks remarkably like Billy Joel (now). He's a nice guy and when I looked at the vintage fire truck, we got to wondering how old it is, and so being a fireman himself (it's all volunteer around here) he went to find out.

It turns out that this is a 1940 Chevy, and Jack (my neighbor's stepfather) drove it to the firehouse from the dealer after the sum of $3,500 was paid. Hard to imagine, it was built 65 years ago.

We had a nice ceremony down at our town's memorial park. The part that always gets to me is when Taps is played and the Gold Star Mothers lay a wreath at the monuments. (If you don't know, a GSM is someone whose son was killed in action. These ladies dress in white and are driven along the parade route in a nice convertible and I always make my kids pay attention when they go by and I try to explain to them that their son went away to fight a war and never came home and so we should show proper respect for them.)

The color guard for the ceremony was two WWII vets, two Vietnam vets, and a veteran of the Korean war. I took my son's picture with them and they were quite cool - one guy at the end let Dan hold his rifle for the photo. Then he said to me "Pray that he never really needs to carry a gun" and this big ol' lump in my throat got even bigger. The Uncle Sam Chorus doing God Bless America pretty much finished me off.


So whatever you do this weekend, please remember the soldiers who fought for us in wars past and those who are in our armed forces all around the world right now. Whether it's the heroes of the past or the present, we owe them and their loved ones a debt of gratitude.