The Ypsilanti Heritage Festival: I Love a Parade

Actually, Ypsilanti loves all its parades. We have four of them as we celebrate Memorial Day, Independence Day, the Heritage Festival, and Labor Day. We line the streets and gossip and applaud the local marching bands, the police cars that would raise our blood pressure if we were together in traffic, the firefighters, the old soldiers, the babies, and the elected officials. Our children scramble for the candy that the paraders throw at our feet. It's a charming, small town habit where we embrace the comfort and artifice of tradition. We are as one -- one big, warm, lump of Cheez Whiz.

The antique tractors were preceded today by a golf cart (John Deere, of course) inviting us to guess the age of each tractor. The age was pasted on the back of the seat. Julie and I played along as the fifteen or so tractors rumbled by. I won, of course, due to my extensive knowledge of 1950s John Deere products. It's easy if you pay attention to the headlight design -- they're a dead giveaway. Fortunately, we didn't have a tractor crisis like we did at the Fourth of July parade. One of them stalled in Depot Town, causing a backup that looked like farm town rush hour.

The antique tractors were followed by this year's newcomers, the Read Lit ladies, an elderly group of garishly dressed women with red feather boas. Julie wondered if we were supposed to guess their ages too, but, as they didn't have any numbers pasted on their fannies, there wasn't much point to it.

My favorite parader, every parade of every year, is the gentleman who tows a calliope trailer behind his red 1960s Cadillac convertible. The top is down; his straw skimmer hat is jauntily cocked to one side in counterpoint to his emotionless face. As he drives with his left hand his right hand perches a monkey hand puppet--a monkey oven mitt, really--on the top of the windshield. The monkey dances to the calliope music and smiles at us. He does the best he can, having only a head and two arms. He just bounces a little from side to side and claps his little hands to the calliope beat, hoping that no one will notice the big red Caddy beneath him.