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Paddler
August 6th, 2017, 01:12 PM
From the joural, May, 2008

You have done missed Breezy Springs 47th Annual Memorial Day Parade and
Flapjack Massacree. Jody and I attend every year, mostly because the action occurs a hundred feet from
our doorstep. We were a little late this time. We lined up for the Lions Club flapjack, egg, and sausage
breakfast at 9:30.

Breakfast was served in the fire station. The firemen moved all the fire trucks and ambulances out of
there and put them in the parade. That left room for a long serving line backed by griddles and coffee
urns. Behind the griddles were guys mixing flapjack batter in five-gallon buckets. They stirred the batter
with an electric drill and a paint mixer.

The sausage patties looked like they had been pre-cooked. They were gray, sweaty-looking things
huddled together on the griddle like they were trying to keep warm.

The guy frying the eggs was deaf as a post. But, as he had a one-track mind and that track said, "Over
Easy", he was given command of the egg griddle. He could pour two eggs out of a cup and turn them
without breaking the yolks. Me, I don't want runny egg yolks mingling with the other comestibles on
my plate, so I told him, "Over Hard". Jody wanted hers the same way. We waited a long time for our
eggs. I think the guy was waiting until he accidentally broke a couple of yolks. I was almost ready to
reach over and mug a couple of orders for him. He eventually got tired of looking at us and made what
we wanted.

The parade starts at Hillside Cemetery, about a mile from the center of town. That is a good thirty-
minute walk if you are hoofing it in a parade. We had finished eating by the time the leading elements
turned the corner. There was a county sheriff car followed by the Breezy Springs High School Marching Band.
The scantily clad majorettes were out front strutting their stuff. I noticed something odd about those
majorettes: not only were their aspect ratios drifting toward unity, but they were not scantily clad at all. They were covered in what looked like closely woven, flesh-colored chain mail body socks. One would think that
there would be little to choose between looking scantily clad and actually being scantily clad, but, as
there was not a one-to-one correspondence between the number of girls and the number of chins, one
could see that the chain mail might be a benison to the public. Also consider that if all that flab was free
to move without let or hindrance, marching down the road in lockstep could set up undamped
oscillations. A poor girl could break a leg.

The Cellulite Squad was followed by the rest of the band. That is where they put all the honeys. They
put long pants on 'em and give 'em horns to play. That school got a lot of things backwards when I
attended it 45 years ago. It looks like nothing has changed.

The band was followed by a military timeline, starting with pioneers and ending with modern soldiers in
desert camo. They all had blanks to shoot.

The soldiers were followed by townspeople who owned any kind of remarkable rolling stock: anything
either brand new or excessively old. Then came the fire department, followed by various dump trucks
and wagons loaded with Hot Stove kids and Boy Scouts. Tail-end-Charlie was a geezer with a garden
tractor.

The soldiers took up positions around the flagpole and one of the local liturgical engineers gave the
invocation. This was the signal for most of the townspeople to break and run. They knew that sooner or
later, the band would play the National Anthem and they would have to shut the hell up for a minute,
turn off their cell phones, and uncover.

Two high school kids then took over the podium. These kids were the winners of the Dreaded Memorial
Day Smarmy Essay Contest. They stood up there and read their smarmy essays aloud. This was the
signal for the rest of the townspeople to scatter.

The guy who ran the doxology mill at the other end of town got up to give the benediction. He spoke to
an empty house.

MCR>
Abstractor of the Quintessence
Order of the Digital Grail

R.A. Stewart
August 7th, 2017, 11:25 AM
Sounds like fun. I would have liked to join you for breakfast and the parade. Liturgical engineers and the doxology mill,
heh ... the town is probably not going to let you write the official program.

Paddler
August 9th, 2017, 11:28 AM
You could do worse, R.A.
Years ago, my brother and I were doing the tourist thing in Juneau, AK. It was the 4th of July and we watched the parade go through town. They seemed to have the route arranged in a figure 8 pattern, and where the loops crossed, the Hot Stove kids left the parade and ran into a building and changed into their scouting uniforms. They caught the parade again on the flip side. Here, we have enough kids, we don't have to do that.