Everybody loves a parade

Having grown up in New Orleans, I know about parades.  From almost as long ago as I can remember, I want to Mardi Gras parades in that "city that care forgot" each year in late February or early March.  I didn’t go to a lot of parades, but there were dozens each Mardi Gras and I always went to a few at least. The night parades were particularly spectacular with the flambeaux carriers and lit up floats.  I’ll never forget those huge floats with paper macho figures, booming marching bands with dazzling percussion sections, and masked riders who threw beads and trinkets to the assembled masses along the parade route.  It was as much a part of New Orleans as jazz and the French Quarter. There was something exciting and just plain fun about those parades and the anticipation in the air, the feeling of being totally carefree for awhile.  

Years later when I was working as a reporter and photographer at several weekly newspapers in small towns in South Carolina, I had the opportunity to attend various kinds of parades, including Christmas and special event parades as an observer/recorder of the activity with my camera.  It was fun choosing which photos to publish in the paper.  Those parade features were always popular.  It seemed to me that every town, large and small, and cities, too, love parades.  People just like to be in them and to watch them.

This past Sunday, for the first time in several years, I walked just a few blocks to Broad Street in Charleston to watch the annual Christmas parade, which is usually quite an extravaganza for our city.   The entire parade lasted an hour.  The weather was perfect, people were in a relaxed and mellow mood, and the flow of floats, cars, marching bands and marchers filled the streets during a wonderful afternoon in early December.   All those newspaper days came back as I clicked away and made mental notes, as if I was going to write a story and use the photos in the next issue of the paper, as happened so often in the past.  

But on this occasion, I was just out there for the fun of it — no deadlines and no requirement to take pictures.  I would not have been there without my camera, of course.  It’s getting to the point where I really don’t want to go anywhere without it.   One of the best things about parades is seeing how much fun kids are having.  So I got a lot of portraits of them enjoying the parade.  But we’re all kids again at a parade.  Maybe that’s why I am still drawn to them, long after I left New Orleans for good and long after my newspaper days.  

Distant memories flooded back Sunday.  It was a great day filled with little pleasures and simple revelations.   Enjoying life.   I’m glad I went.

Here is a set of photos from the 2011 Charleston Christmas parade:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/camas/sets/72157628287489781/