By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA
News Editor
July 9, 2007

Big crowds, no clouds.
As I watched the entertaining July Fourth parade Wednesday, I thought of those four words as a great way to sum up the day.

Thousands of people lined the Heights parade route, and 300-400 more squeezed into every shaded area of Jackson Park that afternoon to hear the excellent sounds of the Gorge Winds Ensemble and White Salmon Jazz Band. More on that in a moment.

“They didn’t have this on the Oregon Trail” was the funniest thing I heard Wednesday. Dennis Harvey of Odell said it as he used a heavy-duty mister to cool off parade participants in front of his filling station in downtown Odell.

This community parade gets bigger and better every year. It draws close to 150 people, a pretty large showing for the size of the community. Friends turn out in force; best seats on the route are on the shady steps of the Methodist Church. But the parade loops all the way back around to Mid Valley School; next year, I might find a place in the ample shade along AGA Road on the “back end” of the route. In any event, the Odell parade is pretty special because the heart of the route is literally around the corner from where it forms, at the elementary school. Parents can drop their kids off under the care of parade volunteers at the school and walk two blocks to go see the whole procession go by.

Horses and riders, fire trucks, decorated vehicles and kids on ribbon-decked bikes are the heart of any parade, and Odell and Hood River had plenty of all those categories.

And then there was the cast of more unusual characters: cyclist Steve Carlson in his melon helmet (an actual, dripping watermelon), bagpiper Kristoff Decker and the Kilt Underground, and Alisandra Denton in her full Lady Liberty garb. In Odell, Chuck and Becky Bugge, shooting water while Chuck drove the convertible.

n

Another kind of shower happened everywhere Wednesday: candy thrown from vehicles. This was typically done gently, but sometimes with excessive and, frankly, hazardous force; butterscotch disk in the eye, anyone?

At both the Hood River and Odell parades, the candy littered the ground — too much for even the most avid kids to pick up, either because their receptacles were full by about 11 a.m., or parents put the kibosh on it, or because the peppermints and caramels and lollypops had been carelessly tossed in the middle of the street.

There, the treats were unsafe to retrieve, and ended up crunched under tires and hooves or falling unappetizingly close to the brown globs of parade debris of a more organic nature.

It was when people got down on the ground to hand out their goodies — a la Horizon Christian School, Alliance Church, Embarq, Gorge Learning Center, independent science teacher Jim Minick, Department of Forestry — that the goodies meant something more, and a personal connection was made.

The spray of candies from the passing truck or car is an undeniable parade tradition, but it is encouraging to see that many groups have found ways to adapt it.

Residents in both communities generally deserve credit for cleaning up after themselves, but after the Odell and Hood River parades had passed, for large stretches what was left were ground-up candies, sticky wrappers and even brown streams of melted fudge bars.

n

Above the Hood River parade, in those cloudless skies, four biplanes made impressive flyovers in formation. At the corner of 13th and Wilson, a plastic grocery bag (probably one used to carry parade candy) fluttered 10 feet in the air, across the intersection, then 20, 50, 60 feet, its wind-whipped crinkling still audible, then the updraft carried it even farther, 100 feet straight up, combination parachute and balloon, until it drifted high above the parade, where it seemed to hover at about 200 feet for about five minutes before tumbling west.

n

Both July Fourth events go right through the town but what’s unusual about the Hood River parade is that it doesn’t go downtown. Yet it may be one of the prime parade routes to be found anywhere: essentially flat, with a couple of long, gradual slopes and one large 90-degree turn for dramatic viewing.

Speaking of 90-degree, that was approximately the temperature Wednesday at the parade’s peak; all the participants, and all the runners and walkers in the Joe Kollas Memorial leading up to the parade, deserve applause for sticking with it.

Back to the music in the park, in particular the bandstand: It seems fitting to pass along Gorge Winds’ director Sam Grotte’s short but pithy plea: Grotte asked that people contact the powers that be about finding a way to put an awning on the park grandstand, to protect performers from wind, rain, and sun.

Ironically, the quality of the Gorge Winds’ and Jazz Band’s music rose with the temperature. We have marvelous musicians in our midst — I would be remiss if I did not mention the Old Glory Marching Band, Samba Hood Rio band, and Los Temerosos mariachi ensemble, all of whom added welcome musical segments to the parade.

Accompanied by the delicious smells of the Hood River Fire Department barbecue, the music in the park is a classic community event well worth checking out after next year’s parade.

n

The coda to the Hood River July Fourth celebration was the Eye Opener Lions’ pyrotechnics show after dusk.

Dick Swart’s letter on this page well describes this amazing display. Add to that, as commentary, the response of the 200 or so people gathered on the Georgiana Smith Park lawn, next to the library, during the long and stunning grand finale: a rousing, spontaneous round of applause that was audible from the hills east of Hood River.