Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

The daughter and I attended West Seneca's annual "big parade" yesterday (there's an official name for the weeklong festival, but I don't remember it just now). It was just about the same line-up as always: a procession of old cars, some fire trucks, a few bands and bagpipe corps, et cetera. There were two groups of dancing young girls, the second of which seemed comprised of six-year olds, whose dance-steps creeped me out a bit. The whole thing was closed off by another group of fire trucks, this time the really huge ones with the sirens that redefine "deafening" when you're within twenty-feet of them. My daughter was excited that some of the participants were throwing candy, of course. She didn't get much, since the bigger kids get to it all first, but she got a few items. One thing that always surprises me is that Smarties, when hurled twenty or more feet onto concrete, don't shatter. Weird.

There was a moment that I figured SDB would appreciate: a group of former Marines marched (ten of them, about) with two current Marines with them. The group stopped right in front of us for a moment, one of those stoppages that happens in the course of parades, during which the old veterans clustered around the two younger guys, admiring their Marine-issue cargo pants. I couldn't hear the entire conversation, but the younger guys were describing the items that could fit in the cargo pockets and how convenient they are when crawling through muck and whatever it is Marines have to crawl through at times. SDB writes a lot about military stuff, so how about a post or two on military fatigues?

(Oh, and the four little boys on the curb in front of us learned a valuable lesson just then. One of them yelled out to those Marines: "Hey, Army guys!" You never saw a dozen scowling faces whip around that fast....)