Tuesday, June 3, 2008

I Love a Parade

In honor of its 100th anniversary, the working-class Chicago suburb that is home to Haus Jansen and is known for, among other things, being the subject of a running gag on the local TV show Svengoolie, a public safety director who beat up a guy in a bar on the last local election day, and, more recently, making the boneheaded decision to demolish a Sears, Roebuck & Co. mail-order home, held a parade on Sunday.

Whereas we love a good parade, but hadn't been to one in quite some time — come to think of it, I think this was the first parade any of our issue had seen — we were there. With bells on.

So too was the aforementioned Svengoolie:



There were also a bunch of cool old cars:







Also on hand was our local parish, St. Odilo, which happens to be the National Shrine of the Souls in Purgatory:



I've gotta hand it to the pastor, the redoubtable Father Tony Brankin, whose brainchild it was to have the kids on the float represent, fittingly enough, the souls in purgatory:



To be sure, a good time was had by all.

5 comments:

The Dutchman said...

Get your story straight, John, that's Rich Koz, the SON OF Svengoolie!

The original Svengoolie, Gerry G. Bishop, went off the air in 1973.

He still has fans who miss him.

Deb said...

John, you and the clan should join us for the Naperville Labor day parade, my kids heckle the politicians. Oh yeah, we also got to hear GW drop the f-bomb a few years back. This year we could use some fellow pro-life hecklers!

John Jansen said...

Dutch—

Thanks for the clarification.

I've actually never seen the show. I'm just going by Wikipedia:

The series returned to the air on December 31, 1994 on WCIU (channel 26), using just "Svengoolie" as its name; Koz once again resumed the role of Svengoolie when Bishop told him he "believed he was grown up enough now to no longer be just the Son."

Is this true? Or, as is not uncommon in Wikipedia-Land, isn't it?

John Jansen said...

Deb—

Alas, we'll be visiting my family in Minneapolis over Labor Day weekend, so we shan't be able to make it.

Thanks for the invite, though.

sunnyday said...

Those are definitely cool vintage cars! And of course a remarkable way of representing the souls in purgatory. Certainly makes you think.