Parades And Cattle.

This past Saturday morning, October 6, I was flipping channels with the remote looking for something to occupy my brain while my coffee got my heart started, and I found myself watching a parade taking place in Grand Island, Nebraska. It was a terrific parade almost three hours long with a seemingly endless series of marching bands. This was no penny-ante parade, and there were thousands of people lining the streets to watch.

Grand Island is a city of 50,000 people about 2 hours east of Alma. It is the third largest city in the state (Omaha and Lincoln are the two biggest) and each year it holds what is called the Harvest of Harmony parade, which has been held annually for over 66 years. High school bands from every part of the state march proudly with their selected queen (each band has its own) waving from a float usually pulled by a shining pickup truck. Also marching was the United States Marine Corps Band, and, wow, did it ever get a standing ovation from the curb sitters as it moved down the parade route.

Originally called the "Central Nebraska Music Festival" the name was changed to Harvest of Harmony in 1946 and is held on the first Saturday after the first full, or "harvest", moon in October. This year 89 bands marched in the parade, but some years have seen even more. One year, in fact, the parade was listed in the Guinness book of world records as having the most bands in a parade when it hosted 132 marching bands.

Some high school bands from larger towns were big and had 100 or more students marching and playing. Schools from the smaller towns offered quite a contrast. This year the smallest band had but nineteen musicians. Alma High School was represented with a contingent of 42 band members, which is pretty good for a grades 7 thru 12 student body of 110 boys and girls. Almost half the student body is in the band. (My sixteen year old grand-daughter, Enchantra, is not in the band. Her talents are not musical, which is to be expected in this family, not one of whom can play an instrument or carry a tune.)

Each band elects its own queen, who then rides a float in front of the marching band and waves to the crowd. In 1952, one of those young ladies in the parade was Sharon Kay Ritchie, who went on to be crowned Miss America in 1956.

The state of Nebraska keeps offering up interesting and surprising events and facts about life in a farming community, and this parade is just one more of the pleasant surprises. Of course, there are other things that go on that don't exactly involve growing crops. Cattle, for instance.

If corn is king in Nebraska, then the raising and selling of cattle comes in a hot second. Here in Alma there is what is called the "Sale Barn", and every Tuesday morning I can hear the mooing of cattle who are not happy to be in that barn - They probably know they are "short timers". People truck the cattle in on Mondays from the local farms and ranches, then the feed lot buyers come in on Tuesday and bid on the animals that fit their requirements. After fattening up in the feed lot, they soon appear on dinner plates from New York to Los Angeles as steaks, hamburgers, roasts, etc. Sad, but true. Because of the importance of cattle to the Nebraska economy, vegetarians are, of course, not popular here. People who decry the consumption of red meat are looked upon as deranged souls who need counseling or a one-way ticket out of state.

My next post is going to cover another surprising discovery for me, "Winter Wheat". I didn't know there was such a thing, but there most certainly is, and I'd like to tell you all about it.

Charlie