Everybody Loves a Parade!

We've all heard that line a time or two, haven't we? Everybody loves a parade! Sure they do.

Well, almost everyone does enjoy them and yesterday, we -Mandy, Ken, Maya, Kurtis and I -went to Osceola Mills (a town about 15 miles from here) to watch the Fireman's Parade there.

Okay, I confess we did have an ulterior motive for going out in the noonday heat to stand on concrete (or sit on a nice big slab of hard, cool concrete too, as I was lucky enough to do for part of the time) and watch all the display go by us.

Our motivation was that Miss Maya's group from the Youth Front and Centre Production Group was going to have a float in the parade which meant Miss Maya got to ride on the float and of course, for her to get there, we all had to go along for the ride.

We watched with patriotic pride, for sure, as an old truck with about 5-6 older gentlemen were standing in the back of the truck and the banner stated that they were Vets from the Korean War of 60 years ago.

And we enjoyed seeing some of the local high school bands display their musical -and marching -talents too. The band from our high school -West Branch Area -won first place in the Marching Band category but sad to say, we'd been out in the hot sun for almost 2 hours by the time Maya's float came by and since the parade ended just down the street from our vantage viewing point, we gathered her up and headed for hom before the West Branch Band came through. But we did see the bands from Philipsburg-Osceola as well as the Black Knights from Moshannon Valley schools -both quite impressive, for sure.

And we also saw the girls' softball team from the Philipsburg-Osceola High School who won the state championship about 2-3 weeks ago too! Those girls may not have hailed from our school district but let me tell you this, if everyone else there felt as much of a sense of pride in their achievement as I did, then those kids have one hellacious big fan club!

Lately, it must have been my time in the bucket for screwing things up though -first the icing for the brownies I made -great brownies but I messed up on the icing recipe so they got served "naked." And then, yesterday, I didn't check my camera when I began to try to take some memorable photos of various entries in the parade therefore the first 3-4 pictures I thought I was taking actually were about 15-20 second videos of -well, pretty much of nothing!

Fortunately I caught my error and corrected the setting on the camera so I did get a few decent photos to remember this year's parade for posterity.
This was one of the first floats to come by us and I just thought it was neat that someone thought to pay homage to Civil War Vets on the 150th Anniversary of that war.

And, of course, as is the norm for any
parade on Independence Day, there
has to be an appearance of virtually
every local politician running for some office or other too. In these two pictures, the main focal point for me was one of the candidates running for County Commissioner and that's because the young man -kind of in the center of the street on the right hand photo just happens to be my cousin! He's quite the politician too and I do admire him and his efforts greatly. He's young -oh my yes, just turned 18, just graduated from high school last month and will begin studying this fall at Penn State University but he is also one hard working, determined and very knowledgeable young fellow too. If the voters don't look at him and then rule him out immediately because of his youth but just listen to him speak, to see how genuine and sincere he is about wanting to do what he can, what he believes to be right and best for our county and vote for him based on that, I think he's got a darned good shot at winning this race!

So, go Pj! (Paul Monella Jr -from Morrisdale, PA). You ROCK! And I'm really, really, really proud to claim you as part of my family!
This is the drum major for the Moshannon Valley School's Black Knights band as she led them down the way. She and the whole band looked really sharp all decked out in their spiffy uniforms and the music they played along the way sounded pretty darned good to me too! Just really sorry though that I missed our school's band because that's one area in which our school district almost always shines and since I did learn that our band took first place -well, shame on us for not hanging around a bit longer to see their appearance, huh?

These young ladies are members of the
Morris-Cooper Townships Mini-Majorettes -which for anyone not familiar with the area where I live, that means these kids come from our school district, from two of the townships that compose part of our school system. The kids in red are the younger members and those in blue, are a bit older. The little girl in blue with her hand to her face I think is the oldest daughter of a lady I used to work with about 10-12 years ago.

There are three dramatic productions going to take place in this area over the month of July and this float -which my "zoom" thingy didn't bring in close enough to get a good shot is the kids who will be putting on Peter Pan -I think the weekend of the 15th-16th, if I'm not mistaken. The director of this group is my next-door neighbor, Deb, and she does a superb job of pulling these kind of productions together during the school year and now, the past couple of years, she's been involved in directing summer productions.

These kids are in the cast of the second production -scheduled for July 22nd-23rd and the young man in the center here is also a member of my extended family! That would be the actor of the clan -Jamison "Jamers" Monella -also the younger brother of the young man you saw earlier here who is running for County Commissioner! (Their Great-grandfather and my Dad were brothers and another brother of my Dad's was heavily involved for many, many years in county politics and served a couple of terms as County Commissioner too, as well as Prothonotary. Bet your bottom dollar that Uncle Arch is watching Pj and proud as a peacock of him in his efforts too!)
Here's the float for the production Miss Maya will be in as she will portray and elephant in Disney's "The Jungle Book Kids" on July 29th and I think, the 30th too. However, this is not a picture of Maya as she was seated on the other side of the float. (Aren't these kids just too cute for words though?)
And finally, here's the Jungle Book float from the side where Maya was seated. That's her in the center of this group!

Now, to return to my title of this post about everybody loving parades. Well, that's almost true but for my younger grandson, little Kurtis, unfortunately he's not that big a fan of parades after all.

He was so psyched up as we headed up to Osceola Mills in the truck, jabbering over and over about all the fun things he (and we) would see and especially, he was so very excited over all the fire engines that would be there! He really, really was anticipating those things most of all.

However much Kurtis loves to look at Fire Trucks and admire them and however much excitement he had deep inside as the parade began to come down the hill towards our viewing point, there was just a few major points that he forgot about. One is that much as he loves these things, he is also afraid of fire trucks! But that can be worked around a bit and he can be soothed by simply being told it's really just a big, big truck, ya know.

But, unfortunately for Kurtis, he has sensory issues and one of those sensory issues happens to involve loud sounds and very shrill noises and you know, when they set off the sirens on those big old fire trucks and then, let the darned siren blare from the intersection a block and a half up the street from our point along the route till after they passed us and the end of the other spectators there too, poor little Kurtis was a screaming mass of tears!

He ran for his mother immediately on hearing the first blast of the siren and tried to climb up her leg so she ended up picking him up and holding him, trying her level best to soothe and calm him but it was all to no avail.

Sad to say, but Ken then had to take him back to the parking lot where his truck was and they spent the next almost two hours back there in the truck and not being able to see any of the rest of the parade.

Not to be deterred though, Kurtis announced on the way home that he has big plans to go next week to Philipsburg to watch the Heritage Days parade there -which Maya will also be participating in too. Mandy however informed me last night that she hopes I don't have plans cast in stone to attend that parade because she anticipates that Gram will be staying at home with Kurtis, doing something here equally enjoyable -like watching TV, embroidering most likely for me and probably sleeping for him!

And that's the big event from my 4th of July here in Central Pennsylvania. My neighbors up the street had their normal display of fireworks last night but none of us saw them and I barely even heard them going off.

I think I really must need some Beltones cause that's pretty bad when you don't even hear the firecrackers isn't it?