[Note: I know I’m writing less frequently than promised, so I’ll be pausing paid subscriptions for at least a few months. What that means is if you are a monthly subscriber, you will stop being charged while the subscription is paused. If you are a yearly subscriber, the renewal date will be paused. E.g., if you subscribed in September, 2022 and I pause subscriptions for two months, you won’t be charged again until November, 2023. If you are a yearly subscriber that literally just signed up let me know and I will just refund your money.
I’ll continue to update as I can, but most of my time is being taken up with the launch of another local news business, this one a livestream broadcast called HelloCounty focused on the Milwaukee suburbs that we’re planning to launch in the very near future. It will revolve around conversations with local business owners, elected officials, experts, advocates, and everyday people. We’ll see how it goes.
Another note: A lot of what I write has only a tenuous relationship to journalism. I think most of you realize that. The following is even more tenuous than usual, so feel free to skim or skip entirely if you don’t care to know the detailed arguments I have with my wife before the Fourth of July.]
A Parade
Wauwatosa's 89th Annual Fourth of July Parade—due to a certain high level of construction along North Ave the impetus for which comes from a veritable perfect storm of decades-long-underfunded capital improvement projects, a fortuitous alignment of disparate federal highway funding and WisDOT local bridge improvement cost-share grants coupled with the natural efficiencies inherent to the simultaneous replacement of road and any underlying sewer and water utility piping—took an unconventional route this year. This point was emphasized and reiterated to me in the several days leading up to the July 4th parade by my wife who, the evening prior, had pulled up a map1 and began quizzing me on various roads and intersections associated with the new route.
I had of course heard of these roads and intersections before, had probably even driven on them, but beyond that it was fuzzy (see footnote above). She repeatedly used the phrase "North of Menomonee River Parkway and south of North" to describe what she considered to be the ideal location to secure an empty patch of grass for parade-viewing and which I was to claim as early as possible with the half dozen foldable camping chairs deposited by the neighbors in our driveway. But I also suspect that she kept repeating the phrase "south of North" because it would sound confusing if you were only half paying attention, something else she frequently accused me of and which, to her credit, was a pretty accurate assessment of the current moment.
She then suggested not only a place to park but also the orientation of the car ("better of course to be pointed away from the parade route to make it easier to get out") and how I was to get there, timelines to adhere to, necessary supplies, when to expect reinforcements, etc. I then said something glib or flip about not planning the invasion of Normandy, precipitating a twenty minute digression the main substance of which as well as deeper currents thereunder is also covered by footnote 1 and which ended with an accusation from her that just because I was wearing the new, somewhat preppy, button-down shirt I'd purchased earlier in the afternoon didn't mean I had carte blanche to "fill it out" attitude-wise by being especially glib or flip or cocky. When I tried to defend myself I was told to keep it down because the neighbors were in their backyard or had the windows open or something.
It'd come to this of course, because of the neighbors who I'll just call J— and P—. J— as far as I can tell has four loves2 in his life—Bob Dylan, tequila, repairing old cars, and the annual Wauwatosa Fourth of July Parade—and had been getting up before dawn to claim prime parade-viewing real estate for, literally, decades but who, justifiably given his tenure, felt it was time to pass the baton. So I'd been volunteered by my wife to fill the role. I would normally consider this a fairly straightforward task but the aforementioned drama and underlying long-simmering issues (again, see footnote 1) had created a certain psychologically fraught state of affairs which I carried with me into the evening as I fell asleep and that continued to (haunt is too strong a word, something less than that) through the next morning at 5:30 am when my alarm went off.
I made coffee, took a shower, tried not to wake the kids, and was soon cruising the streets north of Menomonee River Parkway and south of North. But even by what I had considered to be a pretty responsible 6:21 am, the east side of the street had been almost completely picked over, cordoned-off, every grassy knoll claimed with the familiar aluminum trusses of folding camp chairs. After turning around to hit Swan from the other direction, I spot a big patch of empty space and hurriedly pull over, pop the trunk, dump my camping chairs in a heap to claim the maximum amount of curbside real estate, and drive away to park the car. I walk back and…wait a couple hours.
I pass the time by reading a book and observing the slowly accumulating build-out of parade-viewing infrastructure. Many attendees it seems would, on an initial pass, claim their territory as minimally as possible—a single chair, a yellow blanket stretching across the curb—reflecting, I'd guess, an equilibrium between the claim being definitive enough that others cruising the street looking for a spot would respect it but not leaving so much unattended matériel that people might be tempted to steal it (which, to be clear, I saw no evidence of but is a constant source of concern for me personally). This would then be followed up with several additional car loads over the next several hours to deliver, for instance, a card table, more chairs, a coffee mess, portable shade, or tablecloths.
Things people do while waiting for a parade to start:
On more than one occasion, the driver of a cruising car will wave to the audience gathering curb-side as if he too might be in the parade even though he is not. No one that I see waves back, and it's unclear why someone would feel compelled to do this.
Before 7 am it is so quiet that I can hear a man across the street sitting under his 9'x9' Green Bay Packer Economy Canopy (many such along the route, list price $249.99 at Blaine's Farm and Fleet) tell a friend about his trip to London. A few minutes later, the friend tells him about a book he's reading on the Renaissance. Not the southern Renaissance centered around Italy, he makes clear, everybody's familiar with that. He's talking about the Northern Renaissance. France, Belgium, figuring out how the body worked, the impact of the printing press. The Philippines were named after Phillip II. "I never realized that," he says. This is noteworthy to me because I am, at that very moment, also reading a book about the Renaissance.
Shortly before the parade's kickoff, there is a very brief and localized excitement as a pickup truck cruising down Swan accelerates so quickly near the intersection with Stickney that an empty plastic tub is lifted from his truck bed and clatters loudly to the street. The truck continues on, its driver either unaware of or indifferent to the lost cargo. There is some passive rubber-necking (myself included) until a man, I think from the coffee mess across the street (the mess is a nexus of activity and solid Midwestern neighborliness), sprints to the road, picks up the tub, and deposits it along a corner curb where it remains for the entirety of the parade.
The rest of my party is more or less arriving by this point. Clouds have moved in and everyone compliments me on how nice the spot is—lots of space, good view, right at the beginning so we don't need to be sitting around forever, etc., etc.—as they set up their camping chairs, arrange blankets, put out donuts, hand out small gift bags for the kids (grandchildren of P— and J—, my oldest son) that include a pair of Independence-Day-themed star-shaped sunglasses that my son is not a huge fan of, discarding them in favor of his conventionally-shaped and mirrored orange sunglasses which he then refuses to doff in lieu of the star-shaped blue ones even at his grandmother's behest "for just one picture."
Highlights from the parade itself:
There was the Wauwatosa West High School Marching Trojans complete with at least one wiry high schooler holstered in his quints looking particularly miserable and dejected and like he could not imagine a worse place to be than marching down Swan Ave at 9 am.
There were various elected officials in personal autos. This includes the Hannah C. Dougan Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge minivan, the County Clerk's (presumably) personal Mustang, and County supervisor Shawn Rolland in the driver's seat of his own Mustang (GT, not the base model). Relatedly, Shawn Rolland was recently charged with (misdemeanor) election fraud in a bit of a kerfuffle he seems genuinely remorseful about and which seems not to have dampened his or the audience's spirits on this morning.
Other assorted units include: The "Whistling Wheels Spreading Calliope Cheer" carted-organ (a personal favorite); the Distinguished Citizen of Wauwatosa and Wauwatosa Mayor horse drawn carriages; the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility convertible Mazda; the Wisconsin Vietnam Vets Chapter 1 Chrysler Lebaron GTC (a trim level offered exclusively from 1991 to 1995); the “CLEAN AIR. CLEAN POWER. @RideMCTS” battery powered East-West BRT Bus (not then taking passengers, although I think this would have been a good marketing gimmick); and various gaggles of people throwing candy to the children which my son just could not get enough of.
It's around this point that the cloud cover breaks and I realize why the prime patch of lawn I claimed was still empty at 6:21 am. The trees across from my patch, on the east side of the street, are widely spaced, immature, their low-altitude crowns feeble protection from a sun that is now basically offering a keyhole's view into hell. Attitudes of accompanying neighbors and family begin to sour almost immediately on my choice of location. P— is nearly swooning in her camping chair. J— has abandoned his to stand under a nearby tree. Children and grandchildren grow listless and even candy on the street isn’t enough to rouse them. My son loses it when a gaggle of fathers and sons (Boy scout troop? Little league team?) hits him with spray from a super soaker. The donuts are mostly a frosting-puddled mess at this point.
Toward the end of the parade—and opinions are divided on the actual culprit though some pointed the finger at the Creative Construction Shetland Pony—there appeared what J— described (mainly, I think, for the benefit of the children within earshot) as some "chocolate in the street," said chocolate consisting of three or four distinct heaps or clods as well as an increasing number of smears and swirls directly in front of a family's curb-side blanket on the east side of the street.
The street chocolate remained a source of fascination for the remainder of the morning.
At one point a collective Ahhh!!! rises from the crowd as the City of (Somewhere) Fire Rescue duck boat nearly nearly puts a giant tire through the pile. In another instance, those situated closest to the droppings try to warn the Daley's Debutantes (Fox News several years ago described them as the "oldest, largest, most celebrated baton corps in Wis.") of the danger under-Ked as they twirled and skipped down Swan. The whole scene generates various clucks of disapproval from veteran attendees within earshot. They’re not just supposed to leave it on the street. Where’s the little bag to catch it?3 One asks, shaking her head slowly. The approach of a commercial street sweeper bringing up the rear of the parade does generate an expectant buzz on both sides of the street but my read is that the crowd was mostly disappointed with the results.
Anyway, P— and J— thank me multiple times for getting out here so early to find a spot though interspersed with the occasional asides about the heat and the sun and Wasn’t it a scorcher? (And, honestly, it was). I try to explain the complex considerations and tradeoffs one encounters at 6:21 am, an explanation which they seem to take as a bit of defensiveness on my part and maybe it is, and so they go right back to thanking me for getting out here so early.
But will you go again?
I mean, yes, but I also want to note just how out of time the whole thing feels. Look, throwing candy at kids will never not be fun (for the kids), and I don’t know how true it is that there was a past in which a flatbed full of Shriners under their strange Middle-East-inspired hats4 or the Red Hot Trad Jazz Band rolling down the street right before your very eyes was the pinnacle of entertainment, but it definitely feels like there was a time when that was more true than it is now. So why do people go? There are obvious reasons. If your kid is in the marching band, you go to see him march. Even if he looks dejected and acts like he doesn’t care. I get that. But why did I go?
I think I’ve covered the proximate causes in enough detail. But I’d also add that in general I am susceptible to a sort of idealizing romanticism for things I'm not particularly familiar with but feel, for complex reasons that have to do with masculinity or being American or the Western obsession with primitiveness and nature5, that I should enjoy.
For example, I'd never done much camping in my youth and yet always felt like it was something I should very much want to like. It’s difficult to put one’s finger on where this feeling comes from, but seven or eight years ago, my wife and I spent six months “seeing America” and camping at various national parks and forests. And while there was definitely a wholesome communing with nature aspect, the truth was that eventually you get tired of waking up on the ground, and tying knots, and hammering stakes, and trying to find a place out of the wind to cook, and being forced to use those moist and amazingly pungent anaerobic digestion porta potties, or dealing with the volunteer camp host out in the middle of the Los Padres forest who treats the 20 campsites under his watch like a mini-fiefdom and all the petty tyranny that goes along with unaccountable power no matter how small (it was very clean though).
Same same on hunting. There is a sort of romantic view of hunting in Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac where he sits in the snow waiting for a late-migrating duck to land in the last wedge of unfrozen lake. He knows where it will be forced to land and where he needs to be to take the shot, and he waits until the thing he knows will happen—but that no coddled kid cut off from his past and any real contact with the natural world could even conceive of as something it’s possible to predict and act on—happens, and he gets his duck.
I went duck hunting once as an adult. It involved getting up really, really early and piling into a dirty truck with a minor work acquaintance and his adrenalized though amazingly well-behaved retriever and his 10-year old son sleeping in the back and heading to the blind in a farmer's flooded Arkansas field and sitting in the dawn light and mostly being cold and shooting once or twice and of course missing.
But while it’s probably too late for me, I suspect that his 10-year old son will grow to love hunting, or at least he’ll have the chance to love it (or hate it, that is always the risk) in a way that he couldn't possibly otherwise, not because he was somehow immune to the cold and boredom that I felt but because there is a love and affinity for things that can only grow from someone else kicking your butt out of bed and forcing you to do them again and again and eventually maybe finding something deep and abiding underneath the minor miseries that you had no choice but to bear but that without bearing you would never have found at all.
Attending a 4th of July parade of course is…a little like this. It’s obviously pretty American. It is a primitive sort of entertainment. It is certainly in that bucket of things I feel like I should like more than I actually do. But it was good to see my son mostly enjoying himself although I can already envision the day when I've got to kick his butt out the door at 5:45 in the morning to get a spot and who knows how that'll go. He’ll probably put up a stink. And I can imagine a point where both he and I are more or less tired of the whole tradition but nevertheless maintain it in a sort of symbiotic circle of mild coercion and resignation—he doing it because I'm poking and prodding him, I poking and prodding because sometimes we’re too young to realize the importance of things without it—that in our modern day would be reason enough to abandon the endeavor entirely but that our submission to is one of the underrated ways humans wring meaning from the world.
There is a long backstory here—not worth getting into for the most part—but that involves a predisposition (inherited I suspect, but that is definitely not worth getting into) of my wife toward what she would call "clarity" or "being clear" but that I would call "over explanation", "beating a dead horse", "circling the drain" etc., etc. as well as my admittedly lackadaisical approach to learning how to get around the city I've now lived in for several years without GPS assistance. This latter failing I attribute, if only privately (again not really worth getting into), to just an all-around sub-average intuition for navigating the physical world which said deficiency has gotten me into one or two close scrapes during my years both on land and at sea (the latter Naval-service related). Thankfully for everyone involved these were not particularly egregious or dangerous or anything but did force a certain sober assessment of my own abilities vis-à-vis the various career choices and professional trajectories I was then considering.
Five if you include P— which I assume he would but that is just not a topic of neighborly conversation that comes up across the backyard fence. We talk about, like, preferred automotive lubricants and general strategies for removing the stripped hex bolt that's keeping me from replacing the drive shaft on my 20-year old Passat wagon, or the first time he saw Dylan and Joan Baez at the Hollywood Bowl.
Later journalistic research tells me that this is called a “bun bag” or “horse diaper.”
The former name of the Shriners, according to Wikipedia, was “Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine”
Said primitiveness being a theme of that book on the Renaissance and Enlightenment I mentioned reading.