Robert marched with the Mount Pleasant High School Oiler Marching Band in the Memorial Day parade. Not bad for a kid who’s still in seventh grade, at least for a few days.
Robert doesn’t get nervous, at least outwardly, but I knew he was a little apprehensive Monday morning. It was new, after all, but he’d practiced his music, rehearsed with the band and was wearing his new band T-shirt.
Summer marching’s hot, and the band members were clad in the blue-and-gold Oiler Band T-shirts and khakis at the Rite-Aid Pharmacy parking lot at the corner of Mission and Broadway. The temperature already was in the mid-70s when we dropped Robert off at 9 a.m.
When the parade started at 10, it only had a block to go, to the World War I and World War II memorials at Broadway and Kinney. The memorials are erected on the street medians; no one seems to recall why.
The next stop was the main event – the Korean War memorial at the Town Center. This has been the object of controversy for some time. The terrible flag-eating tree is still there. The U.S. flag and the POW-MIA flag, were, of course, flying at half-staff, and had then been an east wind, it would have been a serious embarrassment.
But there was no wind, and a crowd of about 500 people gathered for the parade and the ceremony.
Robert was all business as the Oilers marched down Broadway. They gathered in a semi-circle around the speaker’s stand at Main and Broadway, and played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The band wrapped up the ceremony with a medley of all five services’ marches – and it was done.
It's Led Zeppelin in the fall.
I’d been running around getting some great shots – covering the event for the Sun. Unfortunately, the camera’s memory card turned out to be defective. At least we found that out now instead of when Kat would be trying it in Europe. Kissy Missy’s camera worked just fine; these are her photos.
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