Twice, that I can remember, we found a parade on the brevet route.  On one of those parade brevets, later in the evening, with the parade long behind us, rando buddy Maggie and I were riding side by side with a group of six or seven randonneurs when we passed a church where a wedding was in progress.  

    I looked through the church door at just the right moment and reported to Maggie, “I saw the bride!  She was dressed in white with lace vail.”

    Besides the parade, we’d passed several picnics, softball games, and church potlucks.  As we passed the wedding, it was beginning to move into the evening and in a while all these country and small town folks would head home, remind each other what a good time they’d had today and about how nice the bride looked and how nervous the groom seemed.  Then they’d go off to bed and we’d ride down dark and abandoned roads for hours to come.  A light rain would even begin after a long clear day.

    Maggie said, “You know, it’s a different culture here in the country and in these small towns.  It would be kind of fun to live like this: where picnics and softball games and parades are the entertainment.”

    I had to agree.  And now, that’s where I live.

    When Nina and I moved here to Randolph County, we found the parades, church picnics, high school football games, street fairs, music in the park and in the back of stores, farm equipment shows and just about everything else that goes with quiet rural roads that beg for bicycles.  

    Every day, the newspaper lists events that are going on around the county.  Today, it says you can go to: The Asheboro Farmer’s Market or you can celebrate the last day of the Southeast Old Threshers Reunion where you’ll find the greatest steam, gas, and antique farm machinery display in the Southeast .  You can celebrate the Liberty Festival in downtown Liberty or go to the Freedom Festival  at the Seagrove Baptist Church.  And there’s a Copper Heads baseball game at McCrary Park and a rodeo off of Old U.S. 64 near N.C. Highway 109.

    That’s what’s going on today.  Yesterday, Nina and I joined the Milboro 4th of July Parade.  It began at Faith Temple Baptist Church, which is about three miles from our house, and ended across the street from our house, at Bethany United Methodist Church.  You find a lot of things begin and end at churches around here.  That’s where the fellowship halls are and where picnic shelters provide ample room to set out the food -- food is a big deal here in North Carolina --and where you’ll often find a baseball diamond and plenty of parking on the lawn.

    As parades go, this one wasn’t perfectly orchestrated.  We all met at the Baptist Church parking lot, as we were supposed to, and we started out at about 4:00, as we were supposed to, but the 3 mph parade pace didn’t work out very well and it wasn’t very long before the fire trucks and a couple of hot rods disappeared around the bend ahead of the rest of us.  The parade route was hilly and some of the tractors pulling farm wagons full of paraders did a better job of shifting gears than others so we stretched out even further.  

    After a while, the parade was pretty well spread out and just before Angela took our picture, a friend of ours named, Buddy, decided he was tired of the slow pace.  So he shifted up and pulled his tractor and the wagon full of Bethany Church Youth Group Kids on around the tractor ahead of him.  We were a couple of floats behind and Nina sprinted after Buddy.  I jumped after Nina and when we passed the tractor and wagon ahead of us, things really started falling apart.  

    “Dang!”  I said, “What’s Buddy doing?  He just blew the whole parade apart.”  Then I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was pretty well blown apart before that.  

    As Nina approached one of the Caudle yards, I saw Angela and Debbie standing out there with cameras.  One of the cameras was Nina’s and they were supposed to take pictures of us.  I pulled up to NIna and said, “Slow down!  There’s Debbie!  Wave!”

    So there you have it.  That’s Nina and me in the Milboro 4th of July Parade.  At the picnic after the parade, Nina found Buddy and asked why he took off like that.

    “Aw, that tractor ahead of us was going so slow and the kids in the wagon were hot and I just decided to pick up the pace.”

    I kind of wonder if he didn’t just want to show off his new  tractor a little bit.  Anyway, we pulled into the Bethany Church yard and watched the rest of the parade come in.  There were some pretty big gaps between groups of paraders, but it was all colorful with red white and blue almost outshining John Deere Green.  At least the old Allis Chalmers tractors were a patriotic red.  

    Near the end of the parade, a group of seven paraders in red tee-shirts came in on bicycles.  From the looks of the bicycles, I’d guess they come out of the barn for the Fourth and don’t get ridden much in-between.  But they sure were bicycles.  And it sure was a parade.