Parade day

Fred Meyer Junior Parade in Portland, Oregon. -- Photo by Nancy Woods

It all starts with the tweet of whistles and the shout of hawkers ― the annual Fred Meyer Junior Parade, a kids’ parade that rolls through Northeast Portland each June as part of the Rose Festival. The parade passes right by my office, within just a few feet of my desk. My second-story office windows look down on the parade route, sidewalk and street.

Every year, I forget about it until it’s too late. I’m sitting at my desk, working away, often under deadline, when I start to hear signs of a ruckus outside.

What’s that?! I think. Oh, no! The kids’ parade!

By then, city employees would have blocked off all the streets, so I wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere. There was no getting away from the noise.

Peering out my window, I would see hundreds of people, many of them with smiles on their faces, many of them adults with young children, setting up camp with their blankets, towels and lawn chairs, some using sidewalk chalk to mark their spot.

A pink stripe painted earlier by a city crew lines both sides of the street, an attempt to keep the youngsters from stepping too far out when grabbing for the candy that will be thrown from the floats.

The parade forms about five blocks from my office, where the marching bands, Boy Scout troops and bicyclists get into formation before strutting their stuff. By 10 a.m. the noise starts to ramp up, as police cars, with their sirens blasting, clear the parade route. By 1 p.m., when the parade actually starts, the sound is deafening.

Whatever article I’d planned to work on that day is a lost cause. It’s too noisy to think.

So I give up and enjoy the parade, which includes the Sherwood Middle School students in their blue shirts and black pants playing a song from a 1970s movie I can’t quite remember. James Bond? Then it’s the Cascade Middle School, in red-and-blue outfits, playing “76 Trombones,” followed by a bob-haired girl on a bicycle with tiny U.S. flags fluttering from her bicycle handles.

After her, a troop of Brownies in their patch-festooned brown vests passes by, followed by middle-school unicyclists, some holding an adult's arm, some peddling on their own, one wearing a helmet covered with fresh flowers, another wearing a clown jester-type hat.

Then it’s more drummers followed by hoops and hollers from the appreciative crowd, one band fading away to make way for another. A man pushing an ice cream cart passes by. After him come jugglers, jump ropers and joyful bell ringers (high school-age girls wearing black outfits with gold sequins). Underneath it all, the steady beat of drums and shouts from the crowd.

A young girl carrying a bouquet of bright yellow balloons struts by. Then it’s a squad of girls in red shirts and black skirts doing a River Dance kind of number down the middle of the street. The cops are everywhere in their blue uniforms, making sure no one interrupts the fun. The Fowler Middle School Band from Tigard, in white shirts and blue jeans, plays the theme from Star Wars. Girls from the Evergreen School District twirl gold flags. A blonde girl, who appears to be 3-4 years old, dressed in a pink dress, pink sweater and pink tennis shoes, walks down the middle of the street, a gold crown perched on her head.

Another school band marches by, the music dying down only to give way to another whistling band leader or another hawker selling ice-cream bars or balloons in the shape of monkeys.

And then, just as suddenly, it’s over, an annual reminder that life isn’t always meant to be quiet and peaceful, that sometimes it’s important to let the kids take over and for the rest of us to go home with the sound of “76 Trombones” ringing in our ears.