"Rose Vegetables"
In 1960, on one of the hottest june days on record, I went with my family to watch the Grand Floral Parade of Portland's annual Rose Festival. "Rose Vegetable," hippie friends would later dub it, with no argument from me. At age eight, though, one assumes that when a billion flowers get hegeaded and thrust on public display, they've died for some noble putpose. So there I hunched, front-row-seated on the curb, watching the edible-looking floats and neurotic clowns; the gymnasts, marching bands and National Guard rockets, the stuntmen, stilt men a sequined majorettes; unicyuclists, indian chiefs, rope-trick artists. White-gloved, admiration-stoned proncesses reached toward us through the air, slowly unscrewing invisible jar lids. Beefy Rosarians glad-handed us. Rows of robotic soldiers disdained us. Peanut, ice-cream and bauble vendors hustled us. Magicians and jugglers regaled us. And none of them stuck around long enough to bore us. I grew mesmerized. I can't say for certain that i was having fun, but i was definitely an enthralled little Rose Vegetable, pleased as Pepsi to be a Portlander, wishing I'd a flag, gun or red rose to wave.
The Meadowland Dairy wagon came clomping toward us--a huge, turn-of-the-century bandwagon, drawn by eight enormous black Clydesdales, with a uniformed brass band aboard. The parade abruptly halted, in that inexplicable way parades do, placing the wagon right in front of us. The band lit into some better-than-average Sousa. Parade-goers began bobbing to it like hudreds of happy toilet plungers.