Most Americans love a parade. If you needed conformation, all you had to do was go downtown last Thursday evening and check the crowd at the 76th Annual Saddle Horse Parade. The parade has been the traditional opening event of the San Benito County Rodeo (either roh-dee-oh or roh-dey-oh; however you like it) for 76 years. Seventy-six years is a long time, the parade has gone on in good times and bad, and it still does. Simple arithmetic takes it back to 1933 and the depths of the Great Depression, but we loved the parade through it all.
As Americans, we naturally have a song about it, "I Love a Parade" by Harold Arlen (1905-1986). The opening lines are; "I love a parade, the tramping of feet, I love every beat I hear of a drum." In case you think that Arlen only wrote simple ditties like this one, reconsider. He wrote over 400 songs including 1938's "Over the Rainbow" which was voted the twentieth century's No. 1 song and he also teamed up with Johnny Mercer on great classics such as "Blues in the Night," "That Old Black Magic" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)."
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Will Rogers had a more jaundiced view of parades. "Parades should be classed as a nuisance," he said, "and participants should be subject to a term in prison." I think he was kidding although maybe he was just referring to the politicians who latch on to every parade. Do they really think people come out to see them? If they need a vote, they should go hold their own election rallies and leave the parades for the rest of us.
If you want to know what small-town America is all about the parade would be a good place to start. There were only a few displays with a political message, but even those were low-key and friendly, not the in-your-face kind of screaming rants you see so often in the news. Although politics provides the weekly fodder for my columns, that's where it really belongs - behind the parade, to be cleaned up with a shovel and a bucket.
The parading groups were people with common interests, be it raising animals, playing musical instruments, joining a soccer league or raising funds for the local hospital. The body builders were a big hit as they flexed their way up San Benito Street.
The parade not only shows you where we have been as a nation, but also where we are going. Americans will never lose their love affair with the admirable traits of the hard-working, independent, straight-shootin' cowboy, but small farmers and ranchers continue to disappear as those operations consolidate into bigger businesses to survive. Meanwhile, people have more leisure time and disposable income and with it, more varied interests. There were groups riding crazy looking bicycles, martial arts classes, recreational vehicles and the indispensible marching bands.
The friendly and happy crowd makes you understand that things are not so bad after all. Perhaps Jerry Chin said it best, "When it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow."
My daughter-in-law's Mom was baton twirler in a small town almost 50-years ago, now she's a grandmother many times over. Someday, some of today's baton twirlers will have loads of grandchildren and they will show them how they used to do it and take them to a parade. I hope that some of them will be at the 125th Annual San Benito County Saddle Horse Show Parade.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident. His column runs Tuesdays. Reach him at cwo4mgr@yahoo.com.
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