By C.C. White
Sometimes a town just needs a good excuse to party. Leadville – the self-proclaimed “Parade Capital of the U.S.” – certainly had yet another one this past September. Being too cold in March to formally observe St. Patrick’s Day, each September, at the halfway mark, the citizens hold what they call a “Practice Parade.”
Like the traditional holiday, it features police car escorts, candy-throwing children, dyed green dogs, revelers sporting green hair and sparkly hats, Irish dancers (“Last year, they were Scottish,” grumbled my friend Cecilia Ogasawara, who took Irish dancing lessons and knows the difference), and of course, a dynamite Irish band. There’s a delightful difference with this event, however: often, Leadville tourists have no idea what’s going on. “Why are you dressed up?” one of them curiously asked our group of seven, which included Cecilia’s sister, Mary Carey. “Why is Harrison Avenue getting blocked off?”