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Saturday, July 07, 2012
July 4Th Parade photoblog!!
As is our tradition, we attended the town of Chelmsford Independence Day parade In attendnce was the entire Anganes crowd including Bequa, we had most all of the locally located Cromptons. (You can click on the photos for enlarged versions!)We even had a couple of Frys: The parade is preceded by a 2 mile road race and we almost always have someone from the extended family running in it. Though Mrs A. tried to pull Rosie Ruiz move and sneak in near the end, but she did not fool anyone: This year we had Chaz and Andrew legitimately representing the clan. As a sort of "Where's Waldo" thing, see if you can pick Drew out of the crowd: I only ever seem to catch Chaz as he is going away. Perhaps he is just too fast. But they both finished with respectable times and returned laden with free fruit and snacks and to a welcoming party staffed by their fan club: Even Elias was there, and was qucilky scooped by you-know-who: As parades generally are, this one was fun and included all sorts of cool stuff. There was the usual marching bands, cars, and fire engines. We had a clown, note Mrs. A averting her eyes: We even had Mr T: No idea why these guys agreed to show up, but those beaver fur hats are awesome: And someday, I want to drive a cake. I'm not sure though, why we had Adolph Hitler in the parade: Fortunately, these guys kept him on the run: I like this photo because of course I like anything with tracks, and anything with a .50 caliber machine gun on it, much less four of them. They were firing blanks out of the quad-50 as well. Cool. Extra cool points are awarded because we also learned later that the vet standing up in the cab of that halftrack was a neighbor to Mrs. A and the dad of a childhood friend of hers.I suspect that the last time he rode on something like this he was in Europe some place. And there were people shooting at him, lots of them. Lots of guys like him did not get to come home. These guys who were actually there are getting fewer and further between, and it is easy to forget what went on back then and what these men endured. They often fought in conditions that are unimaginable to us. It was not unusual to lose hundreds or sometimes thousands of men in a single days fighting. Think about that for a few minutes. Thousands. Those of us who did not live through that era are simply not capable of understanding loss and sacrifice on that scale, I think. Heroes indeed. And speaking of heroes, we of course had some of our modern day warriors represented. This HUMVEE was rolling along in the parade: They rolled to a stop, and the soldier in the drivers seat stopped the truck and jumped out. He ran up to Ray, said something to him, shook his hand, and handed him a small object that turned out to be a dog tag style medallion commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the US Army Reserves. It says "Army Reserve Warrior" on one side. I caught this photo trying to get an action shot of this unexpected event. And while it is a mildly interesting abstract photo composition of Ray and Babo I suppose, I realized that my lens was zoomed way out: Once I caught on that my lens was set all wrong, I zoomed in and blindly snapped a picture and caught this by sheer dumb luck: Whoever you are sir, you are a credit to our military and our country. We owe much to these guys. They are the reason we can enjoy parades and sleep securely at night. Ray is still wearing it around his neck.
thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 3:33 PM
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