Super Sweet 2019 Wichita Falls 4th Of July Parade

Today is the 4th 4th of July Parade I have eye witnessed in Wichita Falls.

Clearly I must find viewing this parade an enjoyable experience.

Each year this parade seems to be bigger than the year before.

I like the high level of kid participation. Reminds me of the Burlington Berry Dairy Days Parade of my own little kid years.

And mom and dad (mostly dad) making us elaborate floats. I remember one year we were the Flintstones. I was Fred. My brother, Jake, was Wilma. Another year dad pushed sister Jackie sitting atop a giant strawberry. That may have been the last in a long line of parade floats built by mom and dad.

I saw nothing as elaborate as those Berry Dairy floats of long ago, today in Wichita Falls. Actually, no floats. But still, a lot of people having a lot of fun, parading in various ways.

The Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade starts with Airman from Sheppard Air Force Base, marching with flags representing all the nations with airman stationed in Wichita Falls.

Here we see Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty atop a Wichita Falls Fire and Police Museum firetruck.

And another Statue of Liberty, along with a free spirited flag waver. Now that you are making me think about it, I may have been erroneous when saying I saw no floats today. I think the above qualifies as a parade float.

I also enjoy seeing the large collection of old cars pass by, such as the pair above, with the one on the right seeming to indicate that "We could use a man like Herbert Hoover again."

And here we have a clown version of Uncle Sam, driving a jalopy with extremely active suspension.

The Uncle Sam hat you see the kid picking up, above, blew off an Uncle Sam ahead of him in the parade. I watched the hat blow down the street, following it with my camera, til I snapped the shutter when the kid picked up the hat. I did not see if the Uncle Sam hat was successfully returned to the hat-less Uncle Sam.

Above you see one of those aforementioned kids on parade, getting ready to throw some candy at me.

I particularly like the volume of candy which gets thrown out at this parade. It is like Halloween in July. Kids come prepared with bags. Today, for some reason, I got a lot of candy thrown right at me. I was a sugar magnet. I was handing candy off to other kids, and enjoying some myself. I generally do not care for candy. But this was good stuff. One of which was some sort of modern day lollipop which had what tasted like a sour blueberry at the end of the stick.

Kids doing the candy scramble.

More kids picking up the candy litter.

And now the end of the parade, slowly moving south to the celebration at Kell House.

I did the Kell House part of the celebration my first time enjoying the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade. Because that time I watched the parade from a vantage point near Kell House, sitting where there was no shade. The following years the parade viewing has taken place at a much shadier location at the heart of downtown, near the start of the parade.

One of the things I like about Wichita Falls is the ease of attending something, like a parade, or the Hotter 'n Hell events in August at the nearby by MPEC location. It takes about five minutes to get from my home location to downtown Wichita Falls, with zero problem finding a place to park, such as today, parking in the library parking lot.

One of the things missing from the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade, which I have enjoyed at all other 4th of July Parades I have eye witnessed, as in the Arlington and Granbury 4th parades in Texas, and the Sedro-Woolley Loggerodeo 4th of July Parade in Washington, is local high school participation.

All the multiple Arlington high school's marching bands participate, along with the cheerleaders, and other high school groups.

My one and only time viewing the Granbury 4th parade the high school band participated, along with the cheerleaders. And the high school football team. I long ago webpaged my one and only time watching the Granbury 4th of July Parade. I will go see if I can find the link to it. If you see the link turned on, this indicates my parade search was successful.

Hope the 4th of July is fun and safe for everyone.

And see you all next year in downtown Wichita Falls, on this day, for the 2020 Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade. Which I suspect will be the best ever. Maybe with a high school marching band...

2018 Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade Extravaganza

The 2018 Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade is now history.

Today's 4th of July Parade in downtown Wichita Falls is the third one I have eye witnessed. This year's had the coolest temperature of the three.

The parade began right on time, at 9 this 4th of July morning, with soldiers marching the colors of the flags of the various nations stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base, complete with loud musical accompaniment. You can see and hear that below, via video.

Before the parade began, the crowd of parade viewers quickly grew. And waited. Above you see a quartet waiting in the shade, having themselves a pre-parade smoke of what appeared to be some sort of tobacco product.

Like we said, the parade began with dozens of soldiers in uniform, carrying flags. The parade viewers stood, many with hand over heart. No kneeling was seen. Though I may have been tempted to do so.

I have been to a parade or two where the passing paraders toss candy to the kids in the crowd. But I have never seen this done to the level I see happen in Wichita Falls. One nearby dad commented it is like Halloween without having to go through the effort of walking door to door.

What with all that candy being thrown about and so many people seeming to be having themselves a mighty fine time, the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade has a sort of party feel. I've never seen so many people in a parade looking like they are having so much fun.

The parade viewers seemed to be having just as much fun as the paraders. Such as the lady above. She laughed a lot. The adult parade viewers had fun directing the kids to candy locations.

Red, white and blue seemed to be the dominant color theme.

Red, white and blue, along with multiple iterations of Uncle Sam, with the guy above being one of the best, riding on a rusted jalopy, which reared up and down as it rolled along.

And here we have a pair of red, white and blue grannies riding on the tailgate of a red USA pickup.

A red 65 Ford Mustang sporting the red, white and blue. My first car was a 1965 Mustang Fastback. A 65 Mustang is over half a century old. Yikes!

A collection of young Uncle Sams sporting more of that red, white and blue color motif.

This pair of older "Uncle Sams" pushed a sign which said "SUPER SAM & SAMANTHA: TRUTH JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY".

I think I recognized the people riding the above large Radio Flyer wagon. I am fairly certain they were red, white, blue and Browns.

One of the last entries in the parade was from the local Patterson Auto people, suggesting we PRAY FOR PEACE, with the message tacked to the side of a military vehicle.

And now that aforementioned video of Sheppard Air Force soldiers leading the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade...

2017 Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade

The 2017 Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade is now history.

This year's downtown Wichita Falls 4th parade experience was much more pleasant than last years, due to the temperature being perfectly pleasant this year, while last year was hot and humid.

This year I arrived at the parade location later than last year, thus a shorter wait til the parade began parading by.

Whilst waiting I called my mom. About one minute into talking to my mom the parade started up, two blocks to the north from my parade viewing location. Leading the parade were police and fire truck vehicles in blowing their horns and sirens mode. So loud mom heard it all the way in Arizona.

I have never been to parades, anywhere, where I have seen so much candy tossed to parade watching kids, as what I have witnessed in Wichita Falls. It is like Halloween without the trick or treating.

And kids come prepared with bags to hold their candy loot. In addition to candy I also saw beads being tossed, like Mardis Gras in New Orleans.

I took no photos of the Sheppard Air Force Base contingent as they marched by. My camera was in video mode at that point in time. You  can watch the video of the military marchers below.

Before we get to the video let's take a look at some of what I saw parading today.

I do not remember horses with cowboys and cowgirls in last year's Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade. Or maybe they were there and it was a marching band I remember missing. Which was also the case this year. With several high schools in town one would think there would be a marching band  or two, such as I always heard whilst viewing the Arlington 4th of July Parade.

I like the multiple homemade family float type entries in the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade. Such reminded me of years ago when my dad would build us kids elaborate floats for the Burlington Berry Dairy Days Parade. We often won first place.

I also like entries such as the above pickup with a couple candy tossers riding on the tailgate. I believe these type things are known as Classic Americana.

Above we see some of the candy scramblers in action.

Cub Scouts were doing the flag waving on this entry. Red, white and blue seemed to be the dominant color theme for the day, for obvious reasons.

And now the video where you will hear the loud start of the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade and see the flags of multiple nations march by carried by Sheppard Air Force Base Airmen and Airwomen...

Wichita Falls 4th Of July Parade With Uncle Sam

I have long opined that Texas towns do parades much better than my old home zone of Washington's Skagit Valley.

Fort Worth's Stock Show Parade is excellent. Granbury's 4th of July Parade is also excellent. So is Arlington's 4th of July Parade. And the Ennis Polka Festival Parade is another good one.

Texas towns are able to get their high schools to participate, with marching bands and cheerleaders. And the football team.

Today I attended the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade. It was different than any other Texas town's parade I have attended. No marching bands, no local school participation.

Yet, the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade, while short, was highly entertaining and amusing, with more kid participation than I have seen in other Texas parades. Such as the young Uncle Sam you see above.

And the shirtless kid cops you see below.

I have never seen so much candy thrown to so many kids as what I witnessed today. And it wasn't little measly pieces of candy. I saw Tootsie Rolls getting thrown. I have never seen Tootsie Rolls getting thrown to eager kids at a parade, til today. The kids came prepared, like it was Halloween, with bags to stick their candy haul in.

The kid floats were human powered, for the most part, with what appeared to be moms and dads doing the horse work.

There was plenty of adult participation in the Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade, such as what you see below.

The above "float" appeared to be a bunch of bums sitting at a picnic table which had been installed on some sort of motorized device. The 4th of July connection was not accessible to my feeble imagination.

What with it being the 4th of July one would think the American flag would be prominently displayed.

Above the Texas Lone Star flag blocks one from seeing the flag we later pledged allegiance to at the Kell House 4th of July Ceremony.

The Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade had a lot of motorbikes, such as you see above, and dozens of old cars, some of the Model T type vintage. Several of the old cars had rumble seats. Multiple parade watchers within my hearing distance seemed fascinated by the rumble seats. This had me wondering why these type seats were named rumble.

Sheppard Air Force Base was well represented.

The patriotic little girl you see on the right clapped the entire time the military personnel marched by.

The Wichita Falls 4th of July Parade ends at Kell House where a 4th of July Celebration Party takes place. You can watch video of a little of that celebrating below the below picture of the aforementioned Kell House.

At Kell House all the Air Force personnel who marched in the parade stood at attention. You can see some of them above, behind the cowboy on his mule, holding the flags of the various nations who have Air Force personnel being trained at Sheppard Air Force Base.

The video below gives you a little dose of a Wichita Falls 4th of July, at Kell House....

The Day Before The 4th Of July Is Another Damp One In Texas With Me Thinking About Indian Reservations & Hitler

You are looking at the slightly past dawn, optical illusion, day before the 4th of July, view from my patio.

In reality, the sky is not blue. It is gray. Very gray. We had another heavy rainstorm after the rainstorm I blogged about yesterday, which was an even BIGGER DOWNPOUR.

It was a bit of a challenge to make my way to the pool this morning, what with mud and water creating obstacles.

It is now half past 9. The Arlington 4th of July Parade, I believe it to be the biggest in Texas, has been underway for a half hour.

Without me watching it.

The last time I watched the Arlington 4th of July Parade the temperature was close to 100, making it a bit miserable. If I was in Arlington, right now, watching the parade, the temperature would not make me miserable.

Because it is only 75. July 3 and I have my windows open. Again.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing this Saturday day before the 4th of July. I know I won't be driving out to one of the Indian Reservations to buy me some fireworks. I think there are only 2 Indian Reservations in Texas. And neither is near Dallas/Fort Worth.

Texas exterminated a lot of its Indian population, with those not killed moved to concentration camps, I mean, reservations, in Oklahoma.

I was watching a History Channel program last night about a book Adolf Hitler wrote after Mein Kampf. In the post Mein Kampf book Hitler went on about how he admired how America dealt with its Indian population and America's need to expand its territory into Indian Lands with what Hitler characterized as America's state sanctioned Indian extermination policy. Hitler did not have much of a faculty for accurately understanding history, or interpreting the lesson to be learned.

But, it is a bit troubling to wonder if the fate of the Poles, Slavs, Jews and others would have been different had America not provided that German madman with a twisted, perverse inspiration.

In Texas Thinking About Going To Church & Sunday's 4th Of July Parades

It is the last day of June, Wednesday. In the picture you are sitting with me out on my bedroom balcony, looking at the slightly inclement sky.

I did not get rained on when I went swimming this morning. I like swimming in the rain, but I learned a couple days ago that I do not like swimming in a raging downpour.

It being the last day of June would make tomorrow the 1st day of July. Math is not my forte, but I am fairly certain with tomorrow, that being Thursday, being the 1st of July, that this would mean that Sunday is the 4th of July.

As far as I know I have no special plans to celebrate the 4th of July. I have no memory of what I did on that particular date last year.

Over the years of my Texas exile I have been to two Texas 4th of July Parades. Texas towns put on good parades. The first Texas 4th of July Parade that I got to witness was Arlington's. I believe this one is the biggest in the big state of Texas. It is quite a spectacle. I should muster the effort to go watch it on Sunday. Since Sunday is the 4th and we are big churchgoers here in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, I wonder if Arlington's parade is on Saturday?

Okay, I just looked it up. Arlington's 4th of July Parade is on Saturday, starting at 9am. The parade begins at West and Mitchell Streets, then turns north on to Pecan Street. Then west on UTA Boulevard, turning north on West Street, then north on to Abram Street, then south on Center Street, back west on Mitchell Street to Pecan Street, again, and then ends near Doug Russell Road.

The other Texas 4th of July Parade I've watched is the Granbury 4th of July Parade, which is also on Saturday, starting at 10am. The Granbury Chamber of Commerce website has info about Granbury's 4th of July events. I found the Granbury 4th of July Parade to be a lot of fun and very, very well done.

Interesting. A couple days ago I blogged about the Sedro Woolley Loggerodeo in my old home state of Washington. Loggerodeo has a big 4th of July parade. Washington is not in the Bible Belt. So, I was curious if the Loggerodeo Grand Parade is taking place on the 4th. Well, it is. The Grand Parade starts at 11am. Sunday, the 4th of July. I think 11am is before some church services end on Sunday, but it has been many years since I've been in a church, I may be remembering wrong.

Texas Hot Water Hot Air & Broken Bikes

In the picture you are going swimming with me early Sunday morning. The water was warmer than the air.

The overnight low was 80. It is not even 10 a.m. yet and it is already over 90. So, it'll be another scorcher in Texas this last Sunday of June.

Next Saturday is already the 4th of July. Towns in Texas put on the best parades I've ever seen, with two of them being 4th of July Parades. One of the biggest in Texas is the 4th of July Parade in Arlington. My favorite, that I've seen, is the Granbury 4th of July Parade.

I won't be going to any parade today, as far as I know. I still have not gotten around to getting my bike wheel fixed. I never think of it until I'm in the mood to do something aerobic and then remember my bike is disabled. Bike riding is easily doable when the temps are over 100.