The Thanksgiving Parade

I think that we can all agree that a necessary component of Thanksgiving is the turkey. Beyond that, many people associate Thanksgiving with a gathering at a certain place or watching football. Or both. For me, Thanksgiving is defined by The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Ever since childhood, I have always gotten up early to watch The Parade on television. Throughout the years I have been in any number of places on Thanksgiving. This year I was at the Comfort Inn in Philadelphia in the middle of rehearsals for the national tour of Babes in Toyland. Luckily, rehearsal started later on Thanksgiving so that we could see The Parade.

One year I took things to the next level by actually being in The Parade. To ensure my spot I worked at Macy's Herald Square for two months. Once I was an employee, I could not only sign up to be a Macy's Giant Balloon Handler, I could sponsor others. A friend from Minnesota and his brother joined me on the crew for Harold the Fireman, a little known Macy's character who never gets much television airtime. On Thanksgiving morning, we reported to the New Yorker Hotel at 5am. Imagine a hotel lobby with wall to wall clowns and fully costumed cartoon characters and you have the New Yorker on Thanksgiving morning. We met our very chipper balloon captain, who helped us find our jumpsuits and reviewed the hand signals that she would use to communicate with us while Harold was in the air. On the bus trip up to the parade starting point, we watched a safety video about balloon handling. Upon arrival, we a met the rest of our crew, including a man who thought it was a good idea to wear a turkey hat instead of the stocking cap that matched Harold. Marching bands were lined up in Central Park, balloons were lined up around the museum, and floats were lined up on the street. In an amazing feat of organization and timing, each component of the parade got to the starting line in the right order, just as a booming voice would say, in our case, "Harold the Fireman, please join The Parade!" From there it was miles of waving at people and managing Harold in the crosswind. The man with the turkey hat did not find it important to actually pay attention to Harold, allowing slack in his rope and all kinds of problems for the rest of us. We did our best, but every few blocks there was a side street without spectators so that we could land Harold early if he got out of control. Harold behaved, despite the man in the turkey hat, and we made it down Broadway, right up to the epicenter of The Parade, the NBC platform in front of Macy's. Two blocks before Macy's was a "quiet zone", where we couldn't make any noises that might be picked up by NBC microphones. Once we approached Matt and Meredith, we had to rush along to keep up with the script and the pace of the show. Safely past that zone, we went around the corner and landed Harold. There were only two landing stations so we had to quickly reel him in back to street level, lay into him to force the helium out, and load him into a truck, ready to be stored in New Jersey until next year's Parade.

I was a balloon handler again the next year, but then retired my balloon handling skills, although I keep it on my resume as a "Special Skill".