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Magic Mike 6XL: The old man and the parade candy

Michael D. Davis.

In my youth, I attended the annual carnival at the Lincoln Highway Bridge Festival. I couldn’t ride the rides because of my tendency to vomit, so I played the games. However, I am not skilled at carnival games, and I lost so much money throwing old darts at limp, sagging, partially filled balloons that my Ma one year banned me from ever going back. To put it mildly, I am not a Carnival or a Festival person.

So, on Saturday, the plan was to be down in Tama taking pictures of the Festival, and the parade, and everything on and off all day. I would go down there in my golf cart, take pictures for 20 minutes, head home for a while, and then go back for twenty minutes, and so on. That was the plan, not only because I’d be outside with my allergies and asthma, but because of how I am in general.

On paper, I may be in my late 20s, but somewhere around the age of 10, I slingshotted to the age of 65 and have remained there ever since. And as the plan went to hell, my inner grumpy, miserly, misanthropic, old man self came out in bursts. For example, in the middle of the day on Saturday, at one point I could be found standing on the lawn of the Civic Center reading my book as people passed me in delirious delight.

The day started in the garage at 9:15 a.m. My golf cart sat backed into the stall of the garage where my sister’s car usually sat in case we had a storm overnight. As the garage door rose, I saw the first obstacle of the day: my sister parked directly in front of the door.

To get out the cart, I had to thread the needle and, in little lurches, make my way between the front of my sister’s car, the side of the garage door, and the side of my Ma’s car. I succeeded, but it was a futile difficulty that could have been easily prevented if my sister had, upon seeing the golf cart in her spot, parked ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD.

Once the cart was out, I drove it all the way down to Tama. I met up with the other reporter for the paper, Jonny, the kid, and set out to take pictures of the parade. The loud noises annoyed me. The children who kept ravishing my feet for the candy that fell annoyed me. At one point, some float threw something that I didn’t get a good look at; it bounced off my stomach, and a child had jumped on it before it hit the ground.

After the parade, I meet back up with the kid, and realize I have a missed phone call from my father which resulted in a two and a half minute voicemail from his pocket. Not too long later, the kid says, “Oh, here comes your dad.”

I turn around, and there is my father and his friend. My father is holding a water bottle that one of the parade floats threw out. He tried to give it to me, but I didn’t want it. He then tried to pawn it off on the kid. Then the old man says, “Do you want any candy?”

And he pulls a fistful of candy out of his jacket pocket and hands it to the kid. Turns out, wherever he was standing, children hadn’t been picking up the candy that had been thrown out in the parade, so my 70-plus-year-old father started picking it up and tried giving it to the kids. They, rightly, didn’t take it.

Upon hearing this, I said, “My Lord! Ya could’ve been arrested, what are ya thinkin’?” My father just shrugged, and gave fistful, after fistful, after fistful of parade candy to Jonny.

More than two hours later, the kid and I are standing together watching one of the mayors in the dunk tank, and the kid pulls out a little baggy of candy from his camera bag. “I’m still working on the candy your dad gave me, man,” he says. I’m just glad my father didn’t drive his white van that morning; that would’ve been the lynchpin. Sadly, I’m sure he could’ve abducted Johnny no problem the way he kept taking the candy.

From there, I went from taking pictures of this event to this event, and never left for a reprieve. My 20 minutes then home plan was out the window. Other than getting trapped watching some ballerinas and getting my shoes splashed by the dunk tank, nothing majorly annoying happened after that other than just being tired, outside, and around people.

I ran into a friend at one point, whom I entertained with my hysterics after he asked how I was. I pointed out that I wasn’t built for this type of stuff, and that I had been there since half past nine in the morning, and now it was the afternoon. I summed up my feelings in one sentence, that came straight from the miserly, misanthropic, old man that lives in the center of my heart, “If you don’t see pictures of this event in next week’s paper, you can just look for my name in the obituaries.”