Parades and Candy and Fireworks, Oh My!

Candy: Today Tim conducted a mock interview to help a colleague and friend prepare for an interview in New Mexico.

The interview took place in Mayer, Minnesota, which is about 30 miles due west of Minneapolis, and approximately an hour and 45 minutes from Albany.

As Tim says, "it was a lot of winding roads!" However, the "interview" went well and Tim said he definitely would have hired the guy if it had been a real interview.

Today was Heritage Day, the town's annual festival, in Albany. We took our camping chairs and set them up on the main street through town, which is almost a block from our house.

The town was packed. Usually it's a sleepy little town with very few people around and even fewer cars, especially in the evenings.

Not tonight.

We estimated that several thousand people turned out for the parade, which started at 7pm (in my mind, the perfect time for a parade...beautiful light, great temperatures).

The parade was really good and lasted an hour and a half. You have to understand. Albany is a small town of 1,818 residents, and we usually don't see many of them until late at night when they head to one of the three bars in town (our favorite is Paul's Par-o-dice, because of the name).

The theme of the parade was "Movies and More!" and we saw floats featuring the Pirates of the Caribbean, Field of Dreams, and at least three floats featuring the Wizard of Oz (hence the not-so-subtle reference in tonight's title).

At any rate, the parade was really fun, especially the loads of candy thrown out from each float by little boys and girls with strong arms who usually managed to pelt someone sitting on the curb with handfuls of Tootsie Rolls, Super Bubble gum, and Mr. Freezies.

Of course, the Shriners on their little go-karts were great, and Tim kept saying to me, "I don't know how they don't run into each other. I'd crash if I tried to do what they do!"

Additionally, it seemed that the royalty from each of the towns in a 20-mile radius of Albany were present at the parade, riding on the backs of top-down convertibles (of course) and each waving with what appeared to be a very painful motion at the crowd lining the streets.

Tim and I both found ourselves hoping that we could be a part of a small community again just so that we could fully participate in the neighborly activities that we witnessed tonight.

The pictures on tonight's post are all from the parade, and I guess you can tell I was experimenting with motion and angles. They make me smile, and I hope they make you do the same. This one is a heavily-Photoshopped photo of the back of an old lawn chair.
After the parade, we packed up our chairs and walked back to the house, where we hung out for an hour or so before walking back through downtown to the Seven Dolors Catholic church to see the fireworks promised to begin at dusk over the golf course.

The show was good, lasting 15-20 minutes, and we saw some fireworks that we hadn't seen before, particularly one that seemed to drape down and down through the night sky toward the ground before finally being extinguished. The finale was very good, too, and it was a nice finish to the Heritage Day activities.

Our own finale to the night was a stop at Applebee's in St. Cloud for appetizers and dessert. Well, maybe that's not today's final finale (how's that for redundancy?), but at least it's one I can mention on this blog.
Tomorrow it seems Albany will put on a town-wide bazaar and so we will probably venture out into it for a little activity and sightseeing as well.

This past week or so I read several books that belonged to my sister-in-law's mom, mostly out of desperation for something to do while we're at the house and when Tim's on the computer.

I read two books by Minnesota author Lorna Landvik (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons and Patty Jane's House of Curl), a little Walt Whitman, of course Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, and am now wading through Russell Baker's book titled Growing Up (kind of boring in my opinion--and you'll see if you click the link that people are now trying to sell their used copies for 1 penny!).

Well, that's all for today.

Here's hoping that you have the chance to get out and see a small-town summer parade. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.