No parade candy? Uffda! Big Knute was in a snit. “There is just way too much candy being thrown around at these parades,” said the cranky old snoose chewer. We made the mistake of sitting next to him at the pie and ice cream social at First Lutheran Church after the Sinclair Lewis Days Parade. “For crying out loud, we worry about these kids getting too fat, having diabetes, heart disease and rotten teeth and then we go and throw tons of candy at them at these parades. Why it’s the ruination of the nation,” added the old man. I told him it’s fun for the kids to get candy and see all the interesting things in the parade. “Da heck!” said Big Knute. “A little bit of candy is nice but not so much that the kids go home with grocery bags full of this sugar-loaded, cheapskate candy.” He figured the average parade unit throws out ten gallons of candy, if there are 100 units in a parade that’s 1000 gallons of candy sprayed on the pavement. “It is certainly good for business,” said the old crank. “Doctors and dentists do well with all the sick kids, farmers do well with all the corn that goes to sweeten the candy.” He remembered there was never any candy thrown out when he was a kid. There were other things to entertain kids, like the time an elephant paraded down Main Street and then there were the calliope and the clowns and the marching bands. “Whatever happened to the marching bands. The old parades had so much old time and patriotic music. That’s what made it fun for kids. Now the parades are all about candy, candidates and queens,” remembered Big Knute as he ate his cinnamon apple pie with a slice of cheese. I reminded him there was plenty of country and hard rock music in the parade and that is what the kids listen to today. And there are horses, clowns and big trucks that kids just love. This caused the old fiddle player to shake his head. I added that bands are expensive to bring in and many kids have summer jobs and camp to go to. They just don’t have time to practice for parades. Then I said, “if we’re so bad, why is everyone smiling?” Knute’s fishing buddy, Reuben, was working on his strawberry rhubarb pie with two scoops of ice cream when he piped up. “Hey, maybe if they threw out a small fraction of what they throw out, the five or ten pieces of candy the kids did get would be all the more valuable,” said Reuben, adding the kids in his day had to work for what they got, they just didn’t have things handed or thrown at them. I defended our parade against these Scrooges in overalls with ice cream running down their chins. I told them people work all year long to make our parades successful and questioned why they wanted to put cold water on a good time by taking candy away from the babies. “A good time is one thing,” said Knute. “But gluttony is another.” There was no changing Big Knute’s mind so I went up for another piece of pie–French chocolate.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 02:14:02 +0000