When the Pagosa Springs town government decided to stop hosting the traditional July Fourth parade last year, some folks experienced a deep sense of loss. The parade had been a special moment each year when the entire community — as diverse, and perhaps as divided, as we are — could stand together on the downtown sidewalks, as one united town, and cheer for our local organizations and and leaders and volunteers as they passed by on cheaply-decorated floats.
Then the Colorado Department of Transportation came up with a brilliant idea to spend a few years tearing up the highway through downtown, starting with seemingly endless replacement of the McCabe Creek culverts and then, as if that wasn’t annoying enough, coming back to replace a mile of downtown asphalt with a more durable concrete surface.
Thus ruining any chance to host the parade along our traditional Main Street route…
Who came up with this idea?
Now, I’m not blaming CDOT. They have to keep themselves busy, like the rest of us. We all tend to feel worthless is we’re not busy.
And they probably just don’t like parades. That’s understandable.
The Town government tried moving the parade to Hot Springs Boulevard in 2024, and it was something of a fiasco. The next year, they tried a ‘parade that wasn’t a parade’ along South Sixth Street, which proved equally unsatisfying.
We had been spoiled by all those years of parades along Main Street.
This past winter, when the Town announced it had given up on parades for the time being, the Board of County Commissioners — not known, especially, for organizing things — voted to try their hand at hosting a parade along Hot Springs Boulevard.
Tomorrow. July Fourth.
But, please! No politics!
This aversion to politics was clearly announced in a quarter-page advertisement in the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN. Here’s a detail from that ad — which appears to be AI generated, to judge by the grammar and repetitive text.
Maybe I’m not the only person confused by this approach to the July Fourth celebration?
I think we’re, like, celebrating one of the most spectacular political events in the history of humankind. The Declaration of Independence. A document rejecting the political systems of feudal oligarchy and monarchy in favor of universal democratic representative government?
I think, like, that’s the whole point of July Fourth. To celebrate the establishment of a new political system… of the people, by the people and for the people.
But maybe the Archuleta BOCC thinks the parade is about something else? Something that should be “patriotic” but “not political”?
I wonder what that might be.
I suppose we could celebrate the adoptable animals from the Humane Society, and the girls from the Dance Academy. Those things seem pretty non-political. But I’m not sure they are “patriotic”. I guess you could dress the dogs in red-white-and-blue. Maybe that would be patriotic.
Maybe Smokey the Bear is non-political? If we’re careful not to reference the cuts to the National Forest budget, and the staff layoffs. But maybe Smokey himself has been laid off.
I wonder if the colors red, white, and blue might be uncomfortably political this year? After all, those are the colors of the battle flags used by the colonists during the Revolutionary War.
Was that war “political”? Some might think so.
The Commissioners probably want to be especially careful about allowing churches in the parade. A lot of churches have gotten awfully political these days. I don’t want to single out the Unitarians, but somebody should.
I know for damn sure they shouldn’t allow anyone from the Daily Post.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.