Patterson Reunion Sunday July 4

The first event was the 4^th of July parade at Boulder Creek. In front of a crowd of 10,000, the Pattersons combined the 1935 Ford Woody with improv skills to provide a crowd-pleasing entry. Linda had the vision of a keystone cop routine associated with the woody, so she created the costumes and recruited the players.  Zackary was the star as a Chaplin-esque jailbird in stripes. David directed the show and played the Mack Sennet-role as the sergeant of the Keystone Cops. Laura played the Beauty in a gown she made herself. The remaining Cops were Alissa, Brian, Melissa, and Linda, with Dave as the driver. Linda found a battery that could drive her sound machine and speakers so that the crowd could hear honky-tonk, silent-film music as we approached.

The skit was that Zackary would escape from the front and the cops would chase, while Zackary returned to woe the beauty until the jailbird was captured.

We stopped five times to perform skits, and each was different. Probably the funniest was when Zackary and Laura went into the crowd to hide from the Cops. When the Cops couldn’t find them, a boy from across the street ran out to tell them where Zackary was hiding. She took off around the car again, but on reaching the other side she grabbed the boy and started throttling him for giving her away. The crowd roared. The Cops soon caught her and order was restored.  The story ends with a moral on the value of good police-community relations.

We took 3^rd place in the vehicle division, only because we didn’t enter the cops as their own group. Many people stopped Cops to complement them on the show, and organizers thanked us and said the parade needed more groups like this one. It was such a crowd pleaser that we’ll probably redo the same show, but to a new audience at a new parade next year. Here is the 4^th of July parade photo album.

We had an Idaho fireworks show that night at our nearest beach. This year it went smoothly, with rockets firing every about 15 seconds and the whole show lasting about 20 minutes, for a total of 84 rockets. A crowd of at least 75 watching the show, and many said they would be back next year. We were a little worried by report in the Santa Cruz Sentinel report that the police were going to crack down on fireworks. We thought we’d see what else was going on after our show. We saw a continuous flow of rockets on the Santa Cruz beaches, with some looking much like a professional fireworks show. Even though no city was had an official show, local boats offered fireworks cruises and the people on board had plenty to see.

The spectacle gave you an idea why cities started doing their own shows 75 years ago. When anyone can buy rockets at the local store and shoot them off, the city must have looked like a battlefield. A city show combined with banning such fireworks surely safer for the community. Now that cities have cut their budgets to save on fireworks, the people are returning to the ways of their great-grandparents, and with do-it-themselves fireworks.

Michael, Heather, Andrew, and Grace returned home, leaving us with 18 Pattersons and 4 dogs.