RED, WHITE & BLUE

It’s May and the scent of blossoms are in the warming air but for a 9 year old it was the month for the countdown to the Annual Millville Memorial Day Parade.  And this year I had an iron-clad plan to finally win a blue ribbon for best decorated bike in the parade for kids 12 and under.  I had been working up drawings of my decorating design and this year I was sure had the winning combination of the standard RED, WHITE and BLUE crepe paper.  I used my 4th grade arithmetic skills to figure out how much I needed to do the job. Steamers from each handlebar grip = 1 foot. Weaving three colors through the spokes of a two wheeler (guesstimate only) = 3 feet each. (This would prove to be a faulty guess on parade day.)   Wrapping the frame = several feet.  This was getting complicate so I gave up and decide that two rolls of each color should be enough. 

On our shopping trip uptown the weekend before the parade Mom bought me six crepe paper rolls from Woolworth's - a much better grade of that crinkly stuff than J.J. Newberry’s five & dime had to offer.  It was twenty five cents for a roll of 10 feet.  

The week crawled by.  I needed more than crepe paper to win it all.  But what?  After much thought,  I had a great idea to add to my design plan. I would dress as Uncle Sam!  That idea faded quickly when I tried to figure out where to get a stars and stripes costume and top hat.  I chalked off that idea.  Then I got an absolutely brilliant flash of a solution.  I would wear my one white dress shirt.  Blue jeans and …a red something?  But I needed a red something…and Mom came up with it, her red Christmas Scarf.  I would just have to overlook the few holly leaves embroidered on it and the smell of camphor balls. 

 I started two nights before Memorial Day to painstakingly decorate my new Schwinn bike.  I created steamers and stretched them carefully  – this created a magical extra crinkle - a trick I learned in art class.  Things were going well until I ran out of paper wrapping the last part of the bike frame.  I was distraught.  My design was not complete.  But I was saved by my mom once again who bought me one more roll of red after work the next day. Mom said, “That will have to do,” since she had bought the last roll left in town.

On the morning of the parade I rode my bike the 2 miles to the High and Broad streets. It was hot already and my shirt was already sticking to my back. The forming area was at our town's train station parking lot.  The high school band was there tuning up.  I surveyed my competition.  Yikes - there were 23 contestants for the blue ribbon and 4 of them had red, white and blue ideas too.  Oh, well, I decided my attempt at bike decorating had a chance to impress the judges at the end of the parade route and win the day because I was the only one dressed to match his bike. 

At 10 AM we began peddling down the “great white way” which we all called our main drag of a few blocks.  The band played a fairly recognizable rendition of “It’s a Grand Old Flag” – and repeated it the whole way because I guess they it was the only tune in their high school patriotic repertoire.  I saw mom and my grandmother proudly waving little flags a few blocks down from the start. A proud moment for me as I weaved my weaved back and forth from curb to curb .  (This wasn’t intentional, peddling a bike at walking speed is not the easiest thing to do.) We turned at the grey stone “Bank by the Clock'' and made the long trek (uphill) to Mount Pleasant Cemetery a couple of miles away.  The crowds thinned out as we left the downtown.  Made it to the special place for our fallen soldiers. The salute of the rifles by the American Legion color guard, dressed in their full battle array woke everyone up.  This aspect of the day for a kid was more exciting as the parade itself.  We held our ears.  Bang, bang…and then far off across the field of gravestones we heard a bugle playing the solemn sound of Taps that echoed off the many resting places.  And when I hear the mournful sound of it played today it still gives me goosebumps.  I was drenched in sweat and slowly walked my bike back to City Hall where the prizes were given. 

But the best laid plans of mice and men as I learned a few year later in English class sometimes weren't enough...I had to settle for an honorable mention white ribbon.  My third in a row.  

But there was always next year…and as I peddled home I started to visualize a new plan.

Hope springs eternal...as Alexander Pope wrote in An Essay to Man - A ponderous piece I would have to struggle through in college when my bike decorating days were over.