I Was in a Parade
Friday was a holiday in Gainesville. Most of the city gets Homecoming off, even elementary school children. The Gainesville Roller Rebels were participating in this year’s parade, so I got up early and drove in the rain to the severely parking-restricted University of Florida campus. There is apparently a rule about parade participants arriving by 8:30AM. Since the parade doesn’t begin until noon, that’s a pretty long time to be standing around…in the rain! We realized that one of us could have shown up at 8:30 to check in, and the rest of us could have slept until ten o’clock. I think that’ll be the plan next year. But the GRR girls are great, and the Wendy’s at the Reitz Union was (surprisingly) open, so I had a Frosty and chatted it up with the team.
It was neat to see the way the Homecoming parade is put together, having only seen it from the sidewalk in years past. All the floats and marchers line up in the O’Connell Center parking lot, or on North-South Drive in front of the stadium, and then, one by one, each contingent makes their way out onto University Avenue and walks east down to Main Street, turns south, and heads back down SW 2nd Avenue. The whole route (on skates for the girls, on foot for me) took less than a half hour. In spite of the rain, there were still thousands of people sitting on the curb of either side of the street, on lawnchairs on the sidewalk, on the low brick wall in front of campus, at tables in front of restaurants, and even from windows of the Seagle Building. It was delightful.
The sad part about marching in a parade is that you don’t really see the parade. I was sad to miss the Pride of the Sunshine. But a couple positions behind us was an old Studebaker truck, on the back of which was a brass contraption which proclaimed it to be the “world’s largest calliope”. I cannot verify that claim, but it certainly made a glorious noise!
When we got downtown we ate together at Big Lou’s, then Karla and Ryan drove us back to our cars. This was my first parade, and it was a delight. And it was fun to see Patsy Clothesline and Ms. Rebel in their costumes.




Dana doesn't do what Dana doesn't want to do.