Pioneers

It's a holiday today here in my home state - Pioneer Day. Much of the State closes business for the day in honor of the Mormon Pioneers that braved death to travel into the unknown West and set up life here in Zion. It is a day that is celebrated with family BBQ's and this big, long-ass parade through downtown consisting of horses, floats, horses, cars, marching bands, more cars and more horses. God help me, I have never been able to figure out the point behind this parade - the second biggest in the nation, from what I have heard (this year there were over 150 listed entrants).

It is hotter than hell out there today. It always is on this holiday. Blistering hot...

I have incredible family-fun memories of this holiday...

There was a time, seemingly eons ago, when my family would gather at the parade route and literally camp out. It wasn't that we wanted front row seats to the usually four-hour long parade. It was that we wanted that time together. It was in the age before anyone had been divorced, when everyone still liked each other. It was the time when my cousin - just a week younger than I - and I would parade out our latest love for approval from the clan. It was the time that we laughed until we couldn't see straight.

Every year, we began gathering around noon the day before the actual parade and stake out our grounds along Main Street in front of Little America between the two big pine trees. Every year, we all knew where we would find one another... there... right there. We would play football in the street. We would order pizza. We would find friends from years past. We would play tag with homemade wooden rifles and thick, postage-sized rubber bands. And, by god, how we would laugh!

We would never sleep and rise with the sun. We would line the street looking bedraggled and exhausted and thoroughly satisfied with life. We would rate the floats as they went by, becoming legendary enough that entrants actually would watch for us and attempt to earn higher points by performing feats for us that they would perform for no one else. We would sit for hours on end while the cars and horses and floats and bands marched by, seemingly without end. And, when the parade was finished, we would move the celebration straight from there to a local park where we would spend more time together and laugh. We laughed so much.

Main Street is empty today, aside from the occasional pedestrian because the parade has been rerouted to accomodate Trax. Last night, 250 cops cleared the parade route of any patrons hoping to capture their youth by camping out.

Today, I have no idea where my family is - any of them. The pine trees are still there, the space between is empty. Today, I slept in until 10:30 am. It's after 12 now and I have heard rumors that the parade is still slinking by. And no one is rating the floats.

Things have certainly changed.