I Love a Parade...

I really do - and not in a musical theater kind of way. Rather, I dig the lines of the approaching column, the pastiche glory of homemade floats, the wheezy blather of a fat kid playin' tuba. But it's not just the pageantry that keeps me backpedaling all these years. It's the trance I fall into when the drumline gets going - a syncopated dirge that punctuates my fannypack's every move. Knowing when to move in close, where to pop off a few shots from the grassy knoll or how to dodge that steaming dollop of showhorse shit ... these scenes aren't covered in most camera manuals. No, that knowledge can only be picked up on the street, where cub scouts throw gang-signs at friendly lenses and wrinkled vets flinch in the hard-candy crossfire.

But enough of my babble, let's talk about South Davidson High. Perched outside the tiny town of Denton, the rural school's had a bad time out of it on the gridiron this year. Six games into the season, they've yet to win any. The townfolk of course are vexed by this abysmal record, but they're not about to round up their pitchforks. Instead, they've sough to to conjure up a little mojo by throwing the kind of homecoming parade they used to stage back in the day. That's where I come in, for celebratory soft news is a specialty of mine and no glittering slog's complete around here without your humble lenslinger running alongside. The TV piece that aired a few hours later 'twernt bad for the effort involved. Apparently it as good enough, for shortly after the broadcast the hapless Wildcats of South Davidson snapped their losing streak by laying waste to da Chatham Central Bears.

I love it when a plan comes together.