2004-06-03 - 3:04 a.m.

Oh--I forgot to write about the parade.

This was on Sunday--our guests just missed it, although they did get to hear plenty of practice musketshots, which must have given them some sort of bad impression of our neighborhood, I guess. The musketfire woke me the hell up, and I remember thinking hasn�t everyone gotten their turn yet?

Coffee having been served, and cigarettes having been smoken, last minute left behind things having been recovered and brought with, we got into Aaron�s car--driving towards Bickfords, HAL-2000esque on-star capable of taking over for me were I unable to fulfill my duties, and the guests did get a glimpse of the Clown Unit trailer.

According to Mayor Joe, it was the biggest parade in Somerville in sixty years. Go Mayor Joe. He had signs put up all along the parade route, making quite clear that cars on the route would be towed. (He had pissed off a ton of people, and this was just after he got elected, when he had a ton of cars towed at 2:00 in the morning after little warning to prepare for a snow storm that never happened.)

The parade was pretty cool. People came out of the woodworks to watch it. The Roommate and I had walking plans that day, or some kind of plan anyway, but we changed it so we could walk down Highland and stay with the parade (on the sidewalk). We ran into a bunch of people we knew, which was fun, and it was also fun to see people hanging out of the windows of the buildings that we pass by every day, watching Aleppo Shriners doing their thing.

I especially enjoyed the Shriner motorcycle unit, and the Roommate and I as we were walking up the route would pass them, stop when they did something cool (I was able to learn the hand signals and what they meant), and then let them pass us again, and then catch up with them again.

I guess that�s why parades are fun. It�s not that clowns and floats and synchronized motorcycles are particularly entertaining to me--it�s that I get to see my neighborhood differently. I�d take the parade I saw down my street over seeing the Macy�s Thanksgiving Parade in NYC 100 times out of 100 opportunities to do so. You walk down a street you love every day and some boredom comes with the love after awhile. A parade down your street is like your girlfriend dressing like a harlot just for you.

(I hope you weren�t offended by that analogy.)

Anyway, I think I�ve made it pretty clear that I�m a big fan of living in Somerville, to the point where I�m a pretty big dork about it. Okay--here�s an example of why it�s worth it. There were horses in the parade, at the front. A few units back, a DPW truck was on the route, and every now and then, it would slow down even more, so that the guy in the back of the truck could take out his barrel and his shovel and you get the picture.

Okay--it�s not like the Roommate and I were following this, but we saw it a few times as the parade caught up with us when we stopped to say hi to people we knew.

But every time that guy got off the back of his DPW truck to shovel off the horse puck, everyone that happened to be there watching erupted in uproarious applause. I mean, that guy was the most popular, and apparently, entertaining, guy of the whole parade, just for doing his job.

And the best part was that every time it happened, he got applause. It wasn�t just an isolated incident. The whole goddamn town was in on it, young and old, whoever you are--like the whole city was in a high school cafeteria and somebody just dropped a tray.