Rereading the seven-year-old post that I reused last week (Broadside, Northside, Riverside Revisited) reminded me of how much I had enjoyed the Fourth of July parade in Northside. After a two-year hiatus for COVID, it returned this year and I was there. But first, there was a Third of July parade to attend.

With Independence Day falling on a Monday, the entire weekend was available for events that might otherwise be crammed into a single day. With sufficient stamina, one could celebrate from Friday evening through the end-of-day Monday. I started Sunday.

I headed to Freedom Fest in New Richmond, Ohio, where I had breakfast at Front Street Cafe, walked to Skipper’s for a drink, checked out the cars (and picked my favorite) at the cruise-in, and looked over the Cardboard Boat Museum. I also snapped a picture of the Showboat Majestic as I walked along the riverfront. The showboat moved to New Richmond in February of 2021 with high hopes that have slowly faded. Last week she was given ninety days to move on. Front Stree Cafe has been using a photo of mine that shows the boat and the cafe as their Facebook cover photo. Guess they’ll be moving on too.

I strolled through vendors lining Front Street until parade time approached then positioned myself near where the parade was forming.

The picture at the top of this article was taken during the parade. It shows one of the parade’s youngest participants making eye contact with a kindred soul who is almost but not quite ready to participate himself. Other pictures from the parade include a local color guard and marching band, some of the fifty or so golf carts and four-wheelers, and Captain America.

On July 4th, I was in Northside for one of the country’s coolest parades. The crowd was bigger than the one in New Richmond and had started arriving earlier. Here I was much closer to the parade’s endpoint than to its beginning.

I know you can’t appreciate the “From the Depths” creatures as much as I did without hearing the island rhythms they are dancing to. That’s much less an issue with the DANCEFIX group since it’s quite obvious these folks are dancing to an upbeat something. Captain America may not have made it to Northside but the parade was not without an attention-grabbing biker.

I’m sure no one was surprised to see the parade take note of the recent SCOTUS decision on abortion. There were small references throughout but it became the complete focus toward the end.

When the last of the parade reached me, I started walking toward the route’s end a few blocks away. My pace was a little faster than the trailing parade elements and I had moved ahead of them when I heard someone on a bullhorn behind me and turned around. A proclamation was being read from a podium encircled by the colorful ladies marching in front of the “Welcome to ‘The Summer of Rage'” banner and others. The only bit of the proclamation that I could make out declared independence for “women and anyone else who could become pregnant”. Valerie Jean Solanas for President of the United States is a play written by Sara Stridsberg. Valerie Solanus (1936-1988) is the author of the SCUM Manifesto and the woman who shot Andy Warhol in 1968. Whether any of that is important in the context of the parade is beyond me.

Kings Island amusement park has fireworks every night during the summer. I live close enough to hear but not see them. The park is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary and has expanded the show which makes it even easier than normal for me to know when 10:00 PM rolls around. I decided to fill out this post by scooting a few miles up the road and grabbing some pictures from a nearby parking lot. The actual fireworks aren’t shabby but neither are they extraordinary. What interested me more were the new-this-year drones. They are what is forming the words “Kings Island” in the photo.

The drones also form Snoopy, his doghouse, and many other images. Sometimes the drones are visible as they morph into something different; at other times they blink out then magically blink on in a new formation. Sometimes the image they are forming moves. That is the case with Evel Knieval’s motorcycle jump. I’m a horrible videographer but I made an attempt to capture it. I, along with my two sons and ex-wife, was actually there in 1975 when Evel made his longest jump, and I’m thinking this is pretty accurate.