If Halloween is the gold standard for kids collecting candy, Monroeville’s Fourth of July parade can lay claim to the silver.
Through the generosity of participants tossing treats toward the crowd, youngsters were able to go a long way toward filling sacks with goodies, without having to wear costumes and venture from door to door.
Yet.
But onlookers who forgo sweets had plenty to enjoy, too, while watching more than an hour and a half’s worth of floats and fire trucks, Corvettes and Mustangs, dancers and twirlers, musicians and athletes —and, of course, a whole lot of red, white and blue — pass by on Business Route 22.
Amid the merriment was a Monroeville Historical Society member who portrayed a town crier, reading a proclamation as he marched along the route.
If you remember from civics class, you can recite along:
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
Pennsylvanians in particular can take pride in the Declaration of Independence, as Thomas Jefferson composed the document in Philadelphia, where it subsequently was signed 247 years ago by 56 seekers of freedom. And nine were from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris among them, representing more signatories than any other future state.
Today’s gatherers of candy are tomorrow’s students of history, learning more about the origins of what now is nearly a quarter of a millennium of an enduring nation.
In the meantime, they can hope their Fourth of July stashes last ’til Oct. 31.
