St. Patrick's Day Parade

I had to tell you about the parade we went to today. It was supposed to be for St. Patrick's Day but seemed to have little to do with Ireland. One of the rules for being in the parade was carrying an American flag. There weren't floats like we would expect in a parade (maybe I've been to the gay and lesbian mardi gras too often). It was two hours long and consisted mostly of marching bands and the armed forces. I didn't know somewhere could have so many marching bands. The strangest thing were some of the marching girls who, instead of twirling batons, were twirling wooden guns or knives. There were lots of army people, fire people and police. Some army people were carrying muskets and some even shot them every 20 meters. It freaked me out to hear gun shots in the middle of a crowded street in the US.

They were also selling toy guns to the crowd. This is also weird. I suppose
Australia has fazed out toy guns for kids so you don't expect to see kids running around shooting people.

There was one float - helmets to hard hats. This is a program to retrain ex-army people and find them jobs I think. Dad - you would've been really impressed - the men were sitting up high on scaffolding with no harnesses.