It Takes All Kinds

There’s no single type of person who marches in the Christmas Parade. You get groups with nothing in common with other groups, but they all get together, often year after year.

There’s the old joke about bagpipes. Someone parks their car in a shady neighborhood and leaves their bagpipes on the back seat. When they come back, the window is smashed, and somebody has broken in and now there are two sets of bagpipes on the back seat.

Despite the bad reputation, people love watching the bagpipers go by.

There were Girl Scouts who seem to have also recruited some of their brothers to march along.

There were Hispanic horseback riders (I didn’t show the sanitation squad that followed).

And troupes of Hispanic dancers.

And there were Shriners dressed in finery….

…or not.

And other Shriners drove stunt vehicles, like “magic carpets” and tiny trucks.

There was a club of Jeep enthusiasts who dressed up as Star Wars characters.

And NASA contractors showing off cardboard and foil replicas of projects they work on.

And watching all of these wildly different groups go by there were thousands of people, some gathered in small groups.

And others gathered in big crowds lining the sidewalks.

It’s tough to describe just how happy people were to be there, both marching and watching. All of the variety of people marching, riding, and driving in the parade, as well as in the crowd, added to the fun. People are different in all kinds of ways, and that made things better all around.