{"id":6301,"date":"2013-07-05T12:17:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T17:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/?p=6301"},"modified":"2013-07-05T12:17:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T17:17:52","slug":"the-4th-of-july-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/?p=6301","title":{"rendered":"The 4th Of July Parade."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since Lowell doesn&#8217;t have a parade on the 4th of July, I found myself sitting on the curb in Grandville yesterday morning.\u00a0 And, having attended 4th of July parades since I was just a wee lad, I pretty much knew what to expect.<\/p>\n<p>So, there were the firetrucks, the military groups past, present and future, and the politicians, city, county, state and national.<\/p>\n<p>Several retirement homes loaded their buses with seniors and drove the parade route.\u00a0 I suppose they killed two birds with one stone.\u00a0 The seniors got an outing and the homes got free advertizing.\u00a0 Plus, they didn&#8217;t have to unload and load the seniors at the parade.\u00a0 They just left them on the bus.<\/p>\n<p>Several churches had floats with live music.\u00a0 Most of them had young people playing Contemporary Christian music and advertizing a contemporary service.\u00a0 But one had a bunch of old people playing blue grass music.\u00a0 I am not sure what kind of a service they were advertizing.<\/p>\n<p>Then, there were groups of kids marching and representing various clubs, schools and activities.\u00a0 With the exception of the Speed Skaters, I could not discern which were which.<\/p>\n<p>Finally at the end, there were mothers pushing strollers.\u00a0 I am not sure if they a part of the parade or just looking to get ahead of the departing crowds.<\/p>\n<p>Interesting enough though, there were no marching bands.\u00a0 I suspect that this was due to budget cuts at schools.\u00a0 Sad.\u00a0 Professor Hill, where are you when we need you?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since Lowell doesn&#8217;t have a parade on the 4th of July, I found myself sitting on the curb in Grandville yesterday morning.\u00a0 And, having attended 4th of July parades since I was just a wee lad, I pretty much knew &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/?p=6301\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p20gJN-1DD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6305,"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301\/revisions\/6305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nedandkathyswift.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}