CHERRY BLOSSOM TIME

Going down to Washington D.C. I witnessed one of the few things in life that I would want to see again. The very first event I attended on my Cherry Blossom tour of the city and one I didn’t want to attend was the annual Cherry Blossom Parade. It turned out to be the highlight of the weekend!

We had grandstand seats, near the reviewing stand and cameras, and it started out by the tour guide handing out these pom-poms which I immediately gave to TLW (The Little Woman). I just didn’t want to be strapped with these stupid pom-poms while watching the parade. You were supposed to wave them, at what or who, I don’t know.

She was no general but I gave her a lot of stars!

Then TLW, my older sister Tessie (Much older) and about another half million old ladies went ga ga over this 2-star general who happened along and was stopping to talk to the crowd. He was a tall handsome man in his early 40’s dressed very sharply and made a great appearance. Well they were passing out all over the place and the husbands like myself we all getting up to go find a bar while we would wait for the wives to recover. We never got there because the old gals managed to recover in time to spoil the fun.

“Oh did you see him, he was gorgeous!”

“Yes, I know, I wanted to say something but my husband is sitting next to me.”

Ha ha.

Its good in America

Going to the parade you became immediately drawn in to the event, as large floats beautifully decorated and hot air balloons of cartoon characters and gigantic cherry blossoms, and even slick looking costumes of marchers of all kinds started to converge at a start off point.

It was a spectacular event, filled with great music, bands and costumes, tradition and only one wayward general. My classmates, all clustered together with the other ‘elder’ gals on our tour commiserated about the wayward general as secret thoughts I’m sure were kept from surfacing. But you know it is the uniform they went ga ga over. I think I’ll go to the Army/Navy store and browse.