Crashing the Big Parade

Tomorrow is the big Days of ’47 celebration in Salt Lake City.  The State holiday commenorates the 1847 arrival of the Mormon pioneers into the Great Salt Lake Valley.  The holiday features the Days of ’47 parade, one of the oldest and largest in the U.S.

I’m reminded of the year my family and I “crashed” the parade.  I was working in the mid ‘90s as a radio tech for the Utah Transit Authority.  Our shop was part of a larger maintenance facility, as a result I knew many of the mechanics who I knew were restoring an old bus from 1950’s.  The mechanics put a lot of work into this restoration, although the color was not the most attractive.  Anyway, one day Dave, leader of the restoration, mentioned to me that they were entering the bus into the vintage vehicle category of that year’s parade, and invited me and the family to join the crew riding the bus in the parade.

Early in the morning of the parade, we went down to where all entries were queueing up for the parade,  We hopped on board with the other mechanics and their families for a fun day driving the parade route.  Soon we were rolling as part of the parade entries until we came to the actual start point, that year at South Temple and Main Street.  Here we were stopped by the control person…. He did not have the bus on his entry list!  Apparently the mechanics had failed to file the proper paperwork as an entry.

Well, since we were holding up the proceedings, the control person made one of the best and most expeditious decisions in history…

“Well, go on, then…”

So there we were, headed down Main Street as part of the big parade!  People were cheering and waving, we had the windows down and waving back…. Maybe even throwing out candy for the kids, I don’t remember for sure.  Older people were having nostalgic flashbacks to the ‘50s when bus transportation was essential.

About 10 blocks down the street, we encountered a stand where an announcer would describe the various entries to the spectators.  We heard:  “Here we have…. Oops, it’s not on my list…. Well, here we have a BIG GREEN BUS!  People cheered and waved even more!

So we had a great time, enjoying the parade and the spectators as parade participants rolling along to parade's end.  We had crashed the biggest party in the State!