Every year, our neighborhood has its own parade for Memorial Day, and I looke forward to it. It’s a small event, but it’s a chance to remember the holiday in the right way and see our neighbors. For the first few years, Neil participated as a cub scout, and one year Kelly dressed up for the costume competition. But last year and this year, we just go to watch the parade and visit the festival.
The parade seemed smaller this year, but it also didn’t involve a costume competition. We still had some of the classic cars (one of them with our local beauty queens–the daughters of the car owner and their friends), the San Jose Sharks firetruck, Sharky, the JROTC and a marching band. We met our neighbor Gus sitting along the parade route and saw the children from the neighborhood schools on their regular boat float.
As usual, the festival involved honoring the armed forces, represented by people from our neighborhood in uniform, and a flag ceremony by the JROTC, as well as the singing of patriotic songs. Peter and Neil just bought themselves lunch and went home, but I stayed with Kelly so she could play the games and slide down the massive slide:
When she’d spent all our tickets, the Hawaiian dancers came up, and we watched them briefly, but Kelly wasn’t particularly interested since she couldn’t understand the Hawaiian lyrics.
So we went home, but it’s always the best Memorial Day celebration I could want.