A LOVE SONG TO PARADE DAY
Thanksgiving has a parade, and it exists because there is something sacred about pop music, Matt Lauer, and enormous air balloons that resemble Pokemon. The 4th of July has a parade, and that almost kind of makes sense: there is marching in wars, and there is marching in parades. But Binghamton, what is Binghamton’s reason for having a St. Patrick’s Day-themed parade twelve days prior to St. Patrick’s Day? Well, listen. Binghamton doesn’t need a reason. Beyond mystery, beyond happenstance, Parade Day is Binghamton’s Parade, and reasoning doesn’t really necessarily have to play into it - in fact, it shouldn’t.
When I was younger, I attended parades because my mother loves my grandmother, and when you get older I suspect that parades are one of the last dignified collective societal things you participate in if you are the typical reclusive type of older person. So if the parade was in town, then that was it: we all piled in to stand on the side of the road to watch the patriotic screensaver come to life and drum, march, and drive its way across the street on repeat for a solid one-and-a-half to two hours. Of course, there was candy for us, we young and restless who might have thought better of marching to our own beat for the afternoon; and I commend the wise, ancient parade gods for that, that scrupulous mechanism in the parade “thing” that’s there to appease children, and keep them from running away forever at what would be the perfect moment for realizing that the ceremony and hubbub of the world of adults is just so boring, and gee, I could just escape off into the crowd at any moment, couldn’t I? Let there always be candy for children.
And in that vein, let there always be parades for people, and especially may there always be Parade Day for Binghamton, which is I think one of the wisest inventions the venerable parade gods have ever made for us.
In Binghamton, the summer season can be overcast and deathly; the fall can feel like a falling guillotine; and the spring, on a cloudy, rainy day, can feel like this warped Slinky world has sprung awry. Okay, so I may have a little seasonal depression. But a lot of people do! That said, Binghamton’s winters can be trying. Really trying. Cold, and bleak. And this one’s almost over, and spring’s coming, baby! You can’t stop her now, nope, she’s almost here!
Parade Day is Binghamton’s way of honoring another cold, long winter that has come to pass. Why wait until St. Patty’s Day? Who has the time? The sun god, Ra, has returned fatefully again to melt last night’s frost off of your car’s windshield; but on Parade Day, you don’t need your car, and plus, given the celebration’s popular Dionysian rituals of drink, you may be better off taking a bus, if you’re the lager-chugging type. Anyway, the beer is secondary; that’s the point. Parade Day is all about being outside.
I myself have celebrated two Parade Days yet: the first as a government-subsidized Binghamton University student, and the second as just a happy guy with the day off.
My first Parade Day was a thrill. I got all sorts of physically reconstituted by those more benign substances that serve the careening sophomore’s daffy rite of collegiate passage, and then I ate nasty cheese fries and fell asleep in my own malodorous drool on a carpet in a pseudo-stranger’s home. Or something like that. I don’t remember completely.
And the second time I drank my fair share too, but that element of the day, by then (I had by this time dropped out of school and returned to the city as nomad-in-love) was no big deal, and plus I had a girlfriend, so I couldn’t go stenching up my mouth with vomitous cheese fries as a result of being half in the bag (well, okay, that still kind of happened, but that’s not the point). The point is, having passed the rite of Parade Day passage and survived getting totally wasted as a pawn on the well-meaning holiday of a culture of consumption and addiction, and with the clarity of “relative” sobriety, on my second Parade Day I was able to notice something truly beautiful and enrapturing.
It was like returning to Whoville from a coma-vacation at the bar on the mountain to find it was Christmas Day. My eyes had grown three sizes bigger, and I could see it: everyone, every last person outside, regardless of demographic, student or no, drinker or no, stood together in concord, and the town rang with the joyful sound of people cheering and marching festively in the street.
The city of Binghamton had done it, they had truly done it! For apparently no reason, and after a long, cold winter spent hunkered in its respective apartment complexes, houses, dive bars and dorm rooms, the city had managed to figure a way to bring its diverse people together to stand outside together on a nippy day, for a happy reason: just because.
And that was pretty cool to recognize at twenty-one. We’re all the same: patriotic grannies, drunkards, riotous frat bros, and impish, lollipop-chewing kids - all of us!
So I celebrated my epiphanic vision by drinking heavily, and it was a really great day, and evening.
I love Parade Day. I’m so happy for you that you can be here to enjoy it.
And while the kids will always have candy to keep them adhered to the herd on the sacred day of ordered marching, just so, those adults will have Guinness and stuff. Just, honestly, you know, be smart about it, okay? We don’t need anybody choking on any Tootsie Rolls.
The 49th Annual Binghamton St. Patrick’s Day Parade starts at 1:30 pm on Saturday, March 5th at the corner of Court and Fayette streets, whence it will travel west down Court Street, ending at the intersection of Main and Arthur Streets on the city’s West Side. Wear green, drink water, and don’t be half-assed about it: this is the legacy of your city, so you better be on your partier’s best.
