It’s July in Menomonee Falls and we all know what that means. Independence Day? Yes, but even before that we have the annual exercise known as the Menomonee Falls Independence Day Parade Spot Grab. Now those of you who live here or have been to the parade know what a big deal it is. More than any other village event, the parade is THE Menomonee Falls social event of the year. EVERYONE has to go see the parade and follow it up with the fireworks on July 3rd.
Some years ago, the village made a restriction that no parade items could be placed out prior to 24 hours before the parade began. I remember about 10 years ago going and staking off a spot along the parade route about a week ahead of time. People would have blankets and tarps out in the median days ahead of time. Now signs go up about a week ahead of time that say “NO PARADE ITEMS, BLANKETS, TARPS OR COUCHES BEFORE 7:00 JULY 2ND.” I am paraphrasing slightly, but you don’t need a double take, that does say COUCHES! Years ago, people used to haul couches out to the median strip (presumable from the apartment buildings across the street) in order to watch the parade in comfort. It truly is something that must been seen to be believed.
Well now with the ban on staking out spots, people have taken to lining up at approximately 3:00 PM on July second waiting for the 7:00 horn to dash across the street and stake off spots in the median strip. This year we weren’t planning on going to the parade because Kris has to work on he 4th and she didn’t want to be up until 11:00 and then have to get up at 4:30 to go to work. That and I really didn’t feel like fighting for a spot this year. Well, we broke down and decided to go. We are going to sit with some friends and they go stake off a spot every year, so I didn’t have to be out there at 4:00 in order to sit on the sidewalk. I got there at about 5:45 and Ben had already claimed his spot. Pretty nice location actually. He had his stakes in the ground and ropes up to say “this is mine”. Apparently the cops are semi-lenient when it comes to staking spots a little bit early as long as you aren’t in the median strip which makes sense since it sort of a traffic hazard, as well as dangerous for people to be darting across the street. But as I was waiting for the 7:00 bell so we could say OK, time to go home, I was talking to Ben, when all of a sudden he says “oh my god look at this”. I had my back to the road and turned around to see just a rush across the street to the median strip. I had forgotten that I wanted to bring my camera so I could take pictures (or video) to post of the utter ridiculousness of the annual ritual. Talk about lemmings! It was only 6:30, a half an hour early. But apparently someone had decided it was time and went across to get a spot, to which everyone else followed. The cops were pretty much helpless. The lights were flashing, but I think they just figured it was pointless to send everyone back because they couldn’t make everyone along the mile and a half parade route pull their stakes so they just sort of figured eh, let ‘em go.
Every year I say that I am not going to do this again, but yet every year I do it. I think that it is more for the girls. If we didn’t have kids who loved the whole parade and fireworks thing we’d just as soon say screw it. Stop back for pictures of the parade in a day or so.
0 comments:
Post a Comment