Realizing full well that competing with an event the size of Scranton's annual "March Monster" is a fool's pursuit, I am happy to say that Wilkes-Barre is making some big moves. W-B is working on its parade and it shows.
A tight collaborative effort by a ton of people is starting to bring results, and respectable ones at that. There's an energy among groups of younger Wilkes-Barreans that is palpable, you can feel it in many ways, with the parade being a prime example of what these people can do.
I had the pleasure of walking, yes, walking in W-B's parade this past Sunday. I'm still sore. It was, oh, about an hour or more of just standing around waiting to walk, then the walk itself, a start and stop sort of saunter, while waving at crowds that were pretty darned impressive in size. On Public Square I'd estimate crowds eight to ten deep.
I've ridden in dozens of parades, and broadcast my share where I "worked" the street, but this was my first walk of a parade route. While it's not really worth an attempt at description, walking in a parade offers a different, maybe even odd perspective on things.
The lads at left made the trip up from Schuylkill County, where their AOH Chapter carries the name of Jack Kehoe, that would be "Black Jack" Kehoe, the most infamous Molly, maybe even the original Molly, the man who started it all. It was at his saloon in Girardville where it is said that the Molly Maguires first met as a group. Although posthumously pardoned by then Governor Milton Shapp (the very first person to be so pardoned in Pennsylvania), Jack Kehoe swung by the neck until dead along with nineteen other alleged Mollies in what's called by many "The Day of The Rope." Pennsylvania history is rich with powerful stories such as "The Day of The Rope."
(Pennsylvania history, anthracite history, local history of any kind, is not to this day taught with any regularity in this state's public schools, to the best of my knowledge. That is completely inexcusable.)
I have no trouble saying it was easily the biggest crowd yet for this parade, and let me take a guess that the parade itself might have been the biggest parade which W-B has seen so far. Ahead, even bigger and better parades in W-B, I'd bet on it.
Hey, the sky has to be the limit for any parade that has not one, but a bunch of Elvises in it. Here's just one of many along with Tux.
Then there was the Scranton parade... The March Monster!
Dowtown Scranton creaks, groans, moans, and smiles with an enormous overflow on parade day. The stats are huge: This year, 11,000 marchers strong. 11,000 people actually in the parade, while an additional 100,000 plus stood and watched.
Well, OK, some didn't just stand and watch, some got a bit jiggy. Some were consumed by the spirit, caught in a moment of Celtic pride, a feeling I know myself. There were others still whose failure to resist "the thirst" drove them to deeds beyond the acceptable in a polite society. Consider the following items taken from published reports post-parade:
- Some Jack fell down and broke his crown. That's a rough approximation of one parade-goer's day as he toppled from a wall and suffered a head injury. Bleeding as he was carried to an awaiting ambulance, he pumped air before the cheering crowd. That's when some sluggo in one of those big idiotic shamrock hats threw something at a member of the news media. An unidentified stupid man in an equally stupid hat was taken into custody after "assault with a cup of ice," following which he and his hat were taken away in cuffs.
- We never knew the Wallendas were Irish. Another fine citizen manages to shimmy, crawl, and balance his besotted self across the Lackawanna Avenue Bridge. No great accomplishment save for the fact that right now there is no Lackawanna Avenue Bridge, just steel beams where the new bridge will be. Once arriving at the west side of the skeletal bridge-to-be, he was promptly arrested, and I assume cuffed and stuffed. Personally, I think he should have gotten a round of applause...and then been cuffed and stuffed.
- Sleep it off where you drop...it's parade day! Countless calls came to the Comm Center post-parade of people lying unconscious in cars, sprawled out cold across front lawns and backyards, and stupefied and prone in assorted areas of public access. Apparently these folks don't have a drinking problem: They get drunk, they fall down - no problem.
SERMON BEGINS HERE...
brewed products, I still find the acceptance of widespread public and apparently proud intoxication troubling...and I always have. It's not just tolerated, it's expected. If Scranton didn't douse itself in booze one weekend in March each year, you can be assured some bars would have a shaky bottom line come the end of that very same year.The level of "...looking the other way" in Scranton jumps higher with each and every passing parade day. In itself, this is an act of wrongful ommission, it is also a practice which carries the potential of great disaster - a taste of which has already been had - and I know for absolute fact that public safety officials there feel the same way.
Why is it, then, that the bishop never even mentions the masses of inebriates stumbling the streets of Scranton on parade day as a the city celebrates a Catholic saint? He was greatly worried about organized labor's role in the parade, he's not happy about Bobby Casey or Joe Biden, yet knee-walking drunkards seem incapable of raising an episcopal eyebrow. Can I get an "Amen?"
SERMON ENDS HERE...
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
