My father loved parades: He loved the local Independence Day parade and the Homecoming Parade at Cardinal Gibbons High School. He watched the Orange Bowl Parade on New Year’s Eve and the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s Day and we religiously watched the Fort Lauderdale Boat Parade every year.
I think it annoyed him that my no-nonsense mother, to whom nothing was ever so grand as to warrant a superlative, was indifferent to the pageantry. She thought the Independence Day Parade was amateurish and that the Boat Parade was an ostentatious display of wealth and she dismissed the Rose Parade as a stupendous waste of foliage. “Think of how many graves you could decorate with all those flowers,” she said every year.
Curiously though, the one thing they both agreed on was that they loved the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. I think they both secretly longed to be living the life romantic in Manhattan, in a spacious apartment with no children and no laundry and they both loved watching the huge balloons drifting past the skyscrapers. “Look, boys!” Mom would say to my little brother and me as we squinted at the small, black and white image, “it’s the Bullwinkle balloon!” And a minute later Dad would enthuse, “Here comes Snoopy!”
It was on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Wednesday, 1969 that my father asked my little brother and me if we wanted to go for a ride in the El Camino. This was always a treat because he let us ride in the truck bed. Dad refused to tell us where we were going but as my brother and I climbed into the back of the truck we gravely debated if we could convince him to stop at the Dairy Queen on the way home.
Fifteen minutes later we were at the appliance store and we followed Dad inside; we assumed he was there to buy a new washing machine since the old one had been making strange noises and would overflow if not monitored closely. That’s why we were stunned when he made a bee line to the back of the store where there was a huge, console television with a “SOLD” sign on it. “What do you think?” he said, beaming. “Are you boys ready for color TV?” Stunned, we could only nod as we watched Dad write a check for the television.
We spent the rest of the evening watching Dad and my big brother wrestle the TV out of the El Camino and listening to Dad swear softly as he tried to connect the antennae. The new TV had a remote control, a new-fangled innovation, and we were amused to discover that if the dog walked by the TV the jangling of his collar would change the channel as efficiently as the remote. Mom was so impressed with the new addition that she actually left the dinner dishes in the sink to sit down and watch the evening news in living color.
Thanksgiving morning Mom put the turkey in the oven especially early and we all settled in to watch the Macy’s parade. Mom left during a commercial break to throw in a load of laundry, as she did every day, but was back in time to see the Popeye balloon. During a subsequent commercial she left to baste the turkey and came back, pale.
“The washer overflowed again,” she said; “we should have bought a new washer, not a TV.”
There was a long pause; Dad cleared his throat. “I can always return it,” he said stoutly. “The check hasn’t cleared yet.”
“Nonsense,” said my mom. “I turned the damn thing off. Who does laundry on Thanksgiving anyway?” and she sat down to watch the rest of the parade.