I had the privilege of participating in the Fiesta Bowl parade back in 1992. Growing up, I always thought it would be neat to be in one of those parades on New Year’s Day. I had grown up watching them on TV as we waited for the games to start on TV. It was always so cool to see the high school and college bands from around the country.
My high school band had already been to the Rose Bown parade and had participated in a Presidential Inauguration Parade. After the Fiesta Bowl, we had been invited to the Olympic Games in Barcelona, but the school board wouldn’t let us accept. The choir had already accepted an invitation to sing in Europe and they didn’t want two groups of kids from the same school out of the country in the same year.
When we went, the bowl people had made tons of arrangements to keep all the bands entertained. We had a BBQ dinner at an old west town. We got a kick ass New Year’s Eve party at Arizona State University. They arranged a Mexican dinner with Marachi band at our hotel and, of course, we got free tickets to the game.
On top of all that, we had a marching contest called the National Pagent of Bands. We got to march our show in Sun Devil Stadium a day or two before the game. While we didn’t win an official award, they did announce that our band was the crowd favorite because of our size and sound. One of our directors had a video camera and took it up to the very top tier of the stadium. We got to see our show all in one frame for the first time ever.
I remember we had to be at the school really early in the morning on December 26 so we could board buses and go. We stopped 3 hours down the road in my old hometown, Monahans, TX, to eat breakfast and rehearse the show again. After that, we got back on the buses and hit the road. We were all super tired and slept all the way to El Paso where we changed bus drivers. We drove all day and night until we got to Phoenix the next day.
We didn’t stop at the hotel first. Nope, we had to go run through our show again at some high school’s football field. We were all so tired, but there were orange trees with oranges on them everywhere. A few people picked one, but we were later told it was against the law to pick the fruit off the trees; we had to admire them from afar.
After we finished rehearsing, they fed us all Big Macs from McDonalds as we got on the buses to head to the hotel. I was never a fan of Big Macs because I don’t like the lettuce or onions on my burger. I was so hungry that it tasted good. I ate every bit of it and was grateful for the food.
I think we got to have some time at the hotel to rest before we got taken out for pizza at this neat place. They had an old theater organ and a guy who played it in the dining room. The place was called Organ Stop Pizza. I don’t remember too much of the food, but the entertainment was fun. What I remember most was they had the first belt driven ceiling fan system I’d ever seen. It’s common to see them at Dave & Buster’s these days, but I had never seen one then.
I don’t know what all we did apart from going to the mall, eating at the western town, the NYE party, marching in the parade and pageant. I remember that we started home right after the game finished and we got home the next day. I know we had to stop in Odessa, Tx where they bought us all McMuffins because we had not eaten all night and none of us had brought food for the trip back.
The parade itself was very tiring. The route was five miles long and there was no stopping or resting. We had to march in step the whole way. Even though it was New Year’s Eve, it was hot during the day and freezing cold at night. Our directors had to go up and down the rows with athletic water bottles to squirt water in our mouths to keep us from fainting. We played March Grandioso over and over again the entire parade route. We played it for every parade we marched in. I think it’s still burned into my memory 30 years later.
I think this is the first time I’ve sat down to write out my memories. I had tried to talk to a few friends about it today but got shut down immediately. At first, I felt a little demoralized because I was excited about it, and nobody cared. Then I remembered my blog and figured this would be good post material.
Here’s a LINK to the parade footage of our band I found on YouTube.
