Parade brings thunderous music, big smiles

The light rain falling on Sunday’s Cherry Blossom Festival parade was accompanied by several kinds of thunder -- all of it musical.

Some thunder was made by musicians who traveled far, as as the Cook High marching band performers who came from Adel. On Sunday, they trailed behind an older man rocking out on a Farmall tractor to a jazz band’s cover of “I Feel Good.”

The music was sometimes as varied as the weather, but it seemed to work for most people.

“It seems like everyone was enjoying themselves, dancing along to the music,” said Rae Williams of Macon, who brought her two daughters and a son to the same corner, Cherry and Third streets, that she comes to every year. She’s serious about her fun at the Cherry Blossom Festival; come February, she prints out the schedule, marks up her calendar, then puts the printout in her purse. This year’s parade, she said, was wet but still had a better atmosphere than last year’s.

Some participants just wouldn’t be stopped. For the Macon Water Authority, Tommy Nto was handing out necklaces of beads to the crowd -- pink ones, of course -- when he ran out. He took off his own beads to give to a woman, then gave away a flowerly lei he’d also had around his own neck.

Other efforts required a more personal sacrifice. A woman rushed in with a rake and wastepan to help a man armed with paper towels, both trying to clean up from the doodoo that good dogs do do. They helped pick up after Furever After rescue.

Such obstacles can cause problems, said Amber Whitley of Macon of the Middle Georgia Derby Demons. Last year the cap from a Gatorade bottle dropped her to the asphalt, but she also worried before the parade about dog poop. Whitley performs as “Ctrl-Alt-Defeat #1UP” -- yes, she played a lot of Nintendo and other games -- and was swooping around Cherry Street in the parade, a unicorn horn and flowers adorning her helmet.

Through the parade was the rain, sometimes a gentle drizzle, sometimes a light mist. The moisture sent many parade fans off to the edges of the street, where they gathered under the roof of Blair’s Too and a walkway for Suntrust Bank, or stood under the Macon Auditorium portico looking over blossoming cherry trees and cheering.

And on came the parade, taking an hour to pass its points. For vehicle fans there were Mustangs old and new, and Corvettes too. One set of horses. And the Shriners, with ridiculously sized motorcycles and a tiny tractor-trailer.

From the sidelines, a girl jumped up and down as her father bicycled by.

“My daddy’s in the parade!” she exclaimed.

Not long after, a woman using her cell phone to record a Twiggs County High School band declared, “I want to follow her.” Moments later, she did, saying to a companion, “Come on!”

Just as people flocked to the sidelines to cheer and wave, others came to the parade itself to support causes. People represented their own schools, their school system, a program for keeping girls interested in science, technology, engineering and math. Some came to show their support for Australia, or Jeeps.

Watching through all of it was Eric Cleveland, 7 months, bundled up against the rain between mother Ricshonda Cleveland and grandmother Regina Brooks.

Others watched with perhaps even less comprehension, like MJ, a blue heeler dog held by Rose Bazquez and Annaliza Ziegler on the sidelines.

But animals were present in the parade itself, with a dog riding above a horse-drawn carriage. The parade was known as the Geico Pink on Pink Parade, and on Geico’s own float was both a dog and a person stuffed into a big lizard costume. It didn’t seem incongruous.

Mark Butcher, general manager of the Marriott City Center and the chairman of this year’s Cherry Blossom Festival, tried setting the tone an hour before the parade began. Butcher oversaw a lighting of the cherry blossom lantern, presented at the first cherry blossom festival in 1983 by YKK, a Japanese company with long ties to Macon. Butcher said the lanterns honor ancestors and all that passed before.

But he also talked about the rain to come.

“We are being kissed,” he said, “with the liquid sunshine.”

To contact writer Mike Stucka, call 744-4251.

This story was originally published March 22, 2015 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Parade brings thunderous music, big smiles ."