Chesapeake Energy's Thanksgiving Gift To Fort Worth

The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year. The downtowns all over America are human gridlock.

Except for Fort Worth. The deadest downtown in America on the busiest shopping day of the year. Which is perfectly easy to understand due to the fact that Fort Worth is the only city in America with a population over 300,000 with not a single downtown department store. No Neiman Marcus. No Nordstroms. No Macy's. No Bon Marche. Not even a Sears or a Penneys.

Now, Fort Worth may be a ghost town during the day of the busiest shopping day of the year, but that night downtown Fort Worth gets really busy with a lot of people on the earlier deserted streets.

People stream into downtown Fort Worth for the annual Parade of Lights. I've been to the Parade of Lights once. It was a very well done, fun parade. Fort Worth does real good parades.

In fact, I've seen more good parades during my relatively short time in Texas than all my years in Washington. Granbury's 4th, Arlington's 4th, the Ennis National Polka Festival Parade, Fort Worth's Stock Show Parade, it being the world's biggest non-mechanized parade. Meaning it's all horses and cows and people. Nothing vehicular pulling anything.

The Official Name for Fort Worth's day after Thanksgiving event is the Chesapeake Parade of Lights, presented by Chase. I guess this means that Chesapeake put up some money for naming rights and Chase bank also paid for something? I don't know. Chesapeake must have made this investment before they fell on hard times with the price of natural gas collapsing and Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon losing a couple billion bucks.

Chesapeake Energy is still paying for billboards, like the one you see above. It is by the Tandy Hills Gas Station were I filled up today for $1.61 a gallon. Chesapeake Energy's propaganda messages are still plastered on Fort Worth buses. All this signage must have been pre-paid.

And, like I said, Chesapeake Energy is going to give Fort Worth a Parade of Lights in about 4 days. I wonder if they will be natural gas powered lights?

Start time? 6pm.
Where? Throckmorton and Belknap Street.
Theme? The Sights and Sounds of the Season.