St. Patrick’s Day Parade St. Louis 2009 |
Here’s the scene at the Cronin household Saturday morning. Alex, one of the Marine officer candidates and a former enlisted man with two tours of Iraq under his belt arrives at 7:30 AM to pick my son Pat up and head down to the the parade route to participate in the five-mile run. We schmooze for a few minutes and then the two of them have to go.
Pat’s girlfriend, Jamie, starts making the pancake batter while Kathy gets the griddle heated up and I get the coffee started. Both dogs are under foot because every morning is party time for them.
As soon as we finish a breakfast of pancakes and link sausages, everybody heads for the showers because my brother, Dennis, will arrive at 9 AM and we’ll drive to downtown St. Louis together.
It’s a beautiful day, cool early in the morning and gradually warming up to almost 60 degrees. Not a cloud in the sky.
Driving down, we had smooth sailing until we saw the police had blocked off the intersection of Jefferson and Market, so we “hung a louie” (made a left turn) and switched to Plan B.
I dropped everybody off at the the Ballpark Hilton and went to the parking building they had assigned to the volunteers and walked back to the hotel. As the Irish say I had to “put a good foot under me” to get back in time for the orientation, but I got back on time because I always try to allow some extra time in my travel plans for situations just like the one we encountered at the intersection.
Dennis and me were assigned to the intersection of 7th and Market, one of the best locations, because their are big plazas on both sides of 7th St., so a lot of people can gather there.
We started patrolling our blocks at 11 AM, talking to folks in the crowd, shooting the breeze with four St. Louis cops out in the center of Market Street, helicopters over head, TV camera crews getting set up on the corners. I looked up and saw my brother with his woolen driving cap and yellow Parade Marshall jacket, grinning from ear to ear. He shouted out to me, “Johnny, what a great idea this was!” I got a big kick out of that because that’s what I wanted to know, that everybody was going to have a good time. And we did!
At 12 Noon sharp two very loud blanks were fired to signal the start of the Parade. Within the first minute, from about eight blocks away, we could hear the first of several pipe and drum corps. The droning of the bagpipes, the rat-a-tat-tat of the drummers, I never tire of it. The leggings, the kilts, the tight formations, the roar of the crowd as they march by. Great stuff!
One of the things that struck me was how many Irish dance schools are in St. Louis and the great support they get. Their girls were out in force Saturday. Loud speaker systems playing Irish reels and jigs, most of the girls were from about 10-16 in age, with their beautiful, ornate dresses, dancing up a storm! Their moms did a wonderful job on their hair and they will be the first to tell you, “No those aren’t wigs, we had the curling irons out bright and early this morning.”
The Clarkson School of Dance was there, so was the Graham School of Dance and a large contingent of step dancers from one of our big county parishes, Holy Innocents.
The Moolah Shriners with their mini racing cars and the big motorcycles were there as always, to the delight of the crowds. I thought about the Secret Service agents that I observed at a rally last summer. They don’t get to participate in the festivities, they are always watching the crowds. I quickly learned that whenever a float started handing out beads, the kids would surge toward the street and I had to have my back to the parade and concentrate on holding the kids back behind the parking lane stripe. The Shriners are wonderful crowd pleasers, but they move so fast and turn so sharply, that I knew I had to be especially vigilant when they came by. When they did pass behind me, their engines were roaring, the crowd was cheering, the kids were jumping up and down and as I took a quick glance over my shoulder, here came a Shriner in his mini racer, leaning over on two wheels!! As Harry Carey might say, “Holy cow!!” He missed me by less than two feet as he sped by.
Where else can you have this kind of fun on a Saturday morning?
Lots of horses in our parade, including a large group of St. Louis Mounted Police. The Marine color guard was there, followed by the Marine Band playing “From the Halls of Montezuma.” All the service branches were represented, the Army had a big band there as well. Several ROTC groups were there, with dancers, big brass sections and heavy on the percussion and rhythm. After the horses passed by, the rear guard was a contingent of “pooper scoopers” and they got one of the biggest roars of the day from the crowd. The waved their shovels at us in response to the applause.
One of the peak moments of the day for me was when a St. Louis icon came by. The Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales. What magnificent specimens they are! There are three horses on each side of the rig and as they passed by, the horse in the middle seemed to look my way and so I called out to him, “Oh, baby, look how pretty you are!” He started nodding his head up and down as if he was agreeing with me and then he started high-stepping for me!! I called out again, this time louder, “My goodness, you guys are handsome!!” Then all six of them started nodding their heads up and down and high stepping and the crowd went nuts!!
After the parade concluded, all the volunteers were invited back to the Hilton for a party. Kathy and Jamie watched the parade with Pat and the Marines from in front of the Hilton, so they went to the room where the volunteer H.Q. was, to wait for me and Dennis. When we got there, we saw they had reserved a table for twelve and the Marines who had run the five mile race were already there, drinking coffee and hot chocolate and devouring freshly grilled hamburger and chicken sandwiches. Kathy told the organizers of the parade honestly that they weren’t part of the volunteers that helped with staffing the Block Captains and Parade Marshalls, but that all the guys had run in the race and one of the young sergeants ran the race and was part of the color guard. So he had been running or marching for six hours straight! She took one look at the Marines and said, “You gentlemen follow me so that I can get you wristbands to get you into the Grand Ballroom upstairs for the party.” Kathy and Jamie were almost in tears when they witnessed the generosity and the good, old fashioned patriotism of that woman’s actions.
So, after we all visited and got something to eat, we went upstairs to the ballroom and, OMG, what an Irish party that was. The room was packed, a live band was playing and the tables in front of the open bar were stocked with cups of Michelob Ultra Light and Guinness Stout, which were all disappearing at an alarming rate. So, I says to meself, I better get over there straightway, so I can relieve the terrible thirst I had developed on the parade route. It seems my fear of running out of Guinness was unfounded, as the boys who had ordered the beer knew their crowd well!
It was a great time and I was thinking about a group of young men that came into the hotel at the same time we were entering. They had blue t-shirts with the famous Golden Dome symbol and underneath it said: “Notre Dame Glee Club.” As I was standing there talking with our group, there was an uproar in the crowd as the Glee Club came running up to the stage. Not walking, running.
“I thought to myself, can this day get any better?” The crowd noise was so loud where I was that I thought I’d walk down the steps to the main ballroom level, to get closer to the stage. Good call. My experience with Notre Dame has been one where I expect to get top performance from whatever the Dames do and although the football team didn’t have the greatest year in 2008, generally speaking, Notre Dame excels at most everything it tries and the Glee Club was no exception. They sang for about a half hour and as they were singing their last song, one of the Marines came up to me to shake my hand and thank me for a wonderful time. The perfect end to a perfect day.
Congratulations to the St. Louis St. Patrick’s Day Parade Organizing Committee for the best St. Paddy’s Day so far!
~~John Cronin~~
Tags: St. Louis St. Patrick's Day Organizing Committee, St. Patrick's Day
