A young girl who I was trying to indoctrinate into the legend and rituals of the Winter Carnival looked out the window of the bus and swooned as Jack Sparrow walked by.
“Jack Sparrow! Look!”
He cut a swarthy figure, this Jack Sparrow, authentic as Johnny Depp himself, right down to the tricorne and dreadlocks. He walked on, out of sight, and I briefly wondered if he was even in the parade or just a fellow who walks around near downtown dressed as a pirate.
We were in the staging area last week near the foot of the High Bridge for the Grande Day Parade, which was trying a new route. We were going to march back to downtown, down West Seventh Street from Smith Avenue, across Kellogg Boulevard and into Rice Park. I was trying to explain to the child that in ancient times, the parade featured mostly the costumed employees of the various manufacturing entities, railroads and dry-goods emporiums that populated the city.
“Why, if you go back far enough, the parade started up on Summit near Dale and wandered downtown and into the Auditorium.”
“Huh?”
What is any of that to a child who has seen Jack Sparrow? We were surrounded by fire and rescue equipment, Hilex bottles, merrymakers from Minneapolis suburbs, clowns, gymnasts and Shriners.
“A unicyclist!”
And a unicyclist.
St. Paul, we have a theme problem.
It’s like Christmas, when you take one of those light tours and the windows in the limousine get so fogged up, the world looks upside down and suddenly the driver stops and you get out to find yourself in a neighborhood of Christmas lights, yes, but also surfers and rocket ships aimed at the moon and elves on water skis. A theme problem.
We have experienced the 126th Winter Carnival, and I write this before, I can only hope, the Vulcans have triumphed once again, although you could certainly argue that they won this year’s festival about the weekend of Jan. 7-8.
Gone are the manufacturing entities, the railroads and the dry-goods emporiums, but the spirit does live on. The parade route was lined with spectators clamoring for beads and candy and, in the case of the Pioneer Press, a nifty headband promoting the Treasure Hunt, the medallion found this year by Lange Wallgren in Tony Schmidt Regional Park in Arden Hills.
“The street is too wide,” said the girl’s mother, for she is a veteran of the more modern and shrink-wrapped downtown route.
She meant Seventh Street, which did seem too wide and did not promote intimacy. And when the parade got to Kellogg, it had to be routinely stopped for traffic, so that the units arrived in Rice Park intermittently with their drivers or leaders or baton twirlers nervously looking over their shoulders wondering where everybody had gone. But Rice Park was well attended, and here the parade felt parade-like and uproarious.
Saturday night, the Torchlight parade followed a traditional downtown route before Vulcanus Rex – the True King! – dethroned Boreas to welcome spring and the warmth of the eternal flame.
The kid enjoyed her experience, but I could tell she was more than occasionally confused. I couldn’t blame her. The general outline is still there, the royalty in a gilded carriage and the supposed bad guys bringing up the rear in their fire trucks, but in between, holy cow, it’s a free-for-all, and maybe it always was.
As for confusion, well, Tony Schmidt was a Ramsey County commissioner who lived in Arden Hills. And that Wallgren fellow should get a journalism award for the quotes he provided to the paper without actually saying that he accidentally tripped over the thing.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 3 to 6 p.m. weekdays on 1500ESPN.
Copyright 2012 Pioneer Press.