Fourth of July Parade, 60's style

     In the first few years of the 1960s, July third was a busy day for kids on St. Michael Street. We gathered up crepe paper, ribbons, flags and assorted other simple materials with which we decorated our bicycles. (There were not enough bikes for all six of the seven siblings in my family who participated, so the younger ones had to use Radio Flyers, which actually was ideal for that meant the toddlers got to partake in the fun too.) On the morning of Independence Day, we put on hats, tied cans to the bikes for some sound effects, and lined up in the front yard. Then we took off down the street and around the court, pedaling up the hill a lot slower than we went down!
     Fireworks after dusk were, of course, the highlight of the day. But those plain and simple patriotic parades were a priceless and delightful fragment of our childhood.