The 4th of July, Oak Park Neighborhood Parade

I had gone to the store with my dad.  As we were walking to the check out counter, we passed a table with rolls of red, white and blue crepe paper.  Dad told me to pick up a roll of each.  When I asked him why, he said we could decorate my bicycle for the 4th of July.  Sounded like fun, I was all for that.  When we got home he showed me how to weave the colored paper between the spokes on my bicycle wheels, tying them so they wouldn’t come off.  We wrapped the colored paper around the handle bars and tied it leaving the long red, white and blue paper to stream from the handle bars.

I was thrilled!  When Dad and I finished decorating it, I rode my bike down the street and back.  Susan from across the street asked me if we could decorate her bike... so we did.  Before the day was over Susan and I had decorated about a dozen bikes with several moms making trips to the dime store to replenish our crepe paper roll supply.  There were kids from the other part of the neighborhood coming to see what we were doing, some I had never met. 

We were all so excited, we decided to have a bike parade the next day on the 4th.  I laid out the plan. We would all line up down my driveway, say the Pledge of Allegience and then with grandeur, slowly start our ride down each street in the neighborhood. Smiling and waving to the adoring fans waiting to see the parade as we passed each house. 

The next day we lined our bikes up on my driveway.  Facing the flag, on my my porch, we said the pledge.  I thought every one would carefully follow the plan I had laid out.  As soon as we finished the pledge though, everyone started yelling,  jumped on their bikes and took off riding like madmen.  They took off fast to make the streamers fly straight out.  

Pedaling  fast, weaving in and out, no lines, no order, it was nothing like what I had visualized.  I was so disappointed. I didn’t understand why they didn’t want to stay in a line and have a parade like on TV.  I went in the house and cried.  

Everyone else though was having a blast riding through the neighborhood, streamers waving from the handlebars, flying straight back in the wind. The whole neighborhood enjoyed the parade.  Others even called my mom telling her what a great idea the bike parade had been.  The decorated bikes streamed through the neighborhood for the entire next week.  Everyone talked about the decorated bikes and the wonderful 4th of July parade.  It was years before I realized that something can be a success, even if it doesn't go as planned.....