Fourth of July - 2024

Fourth of July, 2024.

As has often been the case in recent years, we took in a small town's parade.  The Grand Marshal was a WWII vet.  Once these were common, the default mode of our fathers.  Now they are vanishingly rare.

Other veterans, younger but not young, are still marching.  I can't really explain the kilts and bagpipes but they did not seem out of place.

Fewer parade floats this year.  I'm thinking I'll have the robotics team build a base platform that we can modify for various themes.  Slap on a fish, or a pumpkin, or whatever sort of small town festival you are in.  

There were a bunch of people on bikes.  They ranged from grandparents to tykes.

You see small children in the front row.  That's because candy is often thrown to the crowd.  I bet they were really excited when this rolled up!

Sadly it did not dump a bucket full of sucrose on the pavement.

Parades always end with fire trucks.  Every small town in the area brings theirs.  It would be a bad time to have a fire somewhere.

It was a good day and a good parade.  A couple of Air Force F-16s roared over just before the start.  I guess they have the speed and range to do flyovers of a half dozen parades on one flight.  You can see that there was plenty of Red, White and Blue on display.  Everyone seems happy, far happier than you'd think from the heated politics that most average people quite properly ignore.

But as such things are still happening in the background I've been pondering my every four year feature called: Help Wanted President.  If I can come to grips with it, perhaps I'll have thoughts along these lines next week.

But  today  America is just enjoying another Happy Birthday.