Monday, September 21, 2009

I Love A Parade

On Saturday we (that's me, my wonderful husband "J", his best friend "D", and his wife "D") went to Nebraska City for the AppleJack festival. Now, if you live anywhere in the Midwest, you know that late summer/early fall is the time for small-town festivals. Any weekend you choose, you can find a festival celebrating one thing or another. This particular festival celebrates apples, there being several apple orchards in the vicinity, and right now being about the time of the apple harvest.

One of the features of every festival - not just small-town festivals - is a parade. I love these parades, and I've seen quite a few of them. In a lot of the towns, the parades consist of farm equipment, the local high school marching band, local people dressed for the day, somebody's dog all decked out, maybe a few neat cars and that's about it. I still like them - the people who've dressed up (or dressed up their dog) are having fun, and it shows. However, the NC parade was quite a bit different - it started off with what seemed to be every piece of equipment from the local volunteer fire department. Several fire engines, ambulances, and other emergency vehicles, all with their lights flashing and sirens going. Quite a sight and sound!

Then they started in with the bands! Remember what I said above about a lot of small-town festivals? The (as in only one) local high-school marching band? Well, there must have been at least twenty (yes, 20) marching bands in this parade! They came from middle schools and high schools throughout the area. Every single band was decked out in their uniforms, and were playing their hearts out. Great Fun!

We went to some of the other events of the festival, too. We saw a fantastic quilt show, saw some crafts at a craft show, and went to the fine arts show at Arbor Lodge. These were all interesting and fun things, but the most fun was the parade. To me, that's what a festival is all about.

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