CARMICHAEL, CA (MPG) - The spirit of small-town Americana surged in the suburbs on July 4. With Carmichael’s famous parade canceled due to COVID restrictions, many residents resurrected down-home neighborhood traditions.

Scaled-down pageants brought out bicycles, volunteer bands, lemonade stands and front-porch bunting.

Tennyson Parade mom Mary Maguire organized a pageant to circle a mile of Carmichael blocks near Jacob Lane. The Associate Dean of health and Human Services at CSUS also used the event to gather food and toiletry items for the Women Escaping a Violent Environment organization (WEAVE) and rejoiced in many full containers of donations. “With the COVID crisis, domestic violence has increased,” she explained. “Shelters are filling up; they’re struggling because people can’t make donations in the normal way. We also wanted to give our neighborhood kids a July 4 celebration they’d feel they had a part in. On the morning, I felt like we’d stepped back to the 1970s. In those days, the focus of celebrations was really on neighborhoods. I organized this parade exactly as my parents did when I was child in St Louis, Missouri.”

The event united more than 20 families and assembled a colorful phalanx of bicycles, pedal cars, wagons and decorated doggies. Along the route, resident onlookers sipped coffee and applauded. A local musician and his wife dragged drums out to the street and beat a vibrant marching tempo.

The procession’s youngest patriot was two-year-old Chase Findley, who rode in a 1930s Ford Model A. At the wheel, his grandmother Connie Thomas sounded the horn to herald the procession. “My husband and I drove in the Arden Park Parade for years,” she explained. “I was sad there couldn’t be one this year. Then my daughter asked if I’d come to her neighborhood with the old car. It always gets a lot of attention. The kids loved it and people came out of their houses to wave. It was a smaller gathering for us this year, but I’m happy we could still to be part of a July 4 parade.”