Okay. I Think It's Safe To Post This...

I grew up in the very small town of Scotland, South Dakota. Which, honestly, wasn't all that small when I was growing up. After all, it had 2 grocery stores, 3 bars, 2 cafes, 3 gas stations, a florist, a dentist, a hospital, multiple car dealers, 7 churches, and -- of course -- my parents' drug store. Okay. So the town only had 1100 people. But...

We also had -- and they still have -- one of the best small rodeos in the country every summer. I went a few times when I was a kid, but it wasn't until I got older that I learned that the prizes were actually kind of huge for the small rodeo circuit. So we got a lot of really great talent coming through town that weekend. And, as befits such an event, the Scottie Stampede Rodeo has come to be surrounded by a weekend of festivities.

This year there were the usual events, like Cow Patty Bingo (a whole blog post of its own), a 3-on-3 basketball tournament, a watermelon feed, and some bake sales and all. New this year was a "Kuchen Queen" pageant, sponsored by a company which has now become a huge Kuchen baker in town. (You can see an article about these folks, and the "State Dessert of South Dakota" here.) And, in the middle of it all, was the parade.

This is one of two parades which happen yearly in Scotland. The other one is the High School Homecoming Day Parade, which, obviously, focuses completely on the high school. This one, though, is more town-focused. And -- gradually getting us to the point -- every year someone gets chosen as the Grand Marshall. It's one of those strange honorary titles that small towns can bestow on its residents.

Grand Marshalls in the parade get to ride in a convertible and wave at the crowd and get cheered for as they go through town. Basically, it's the one time in a year (and, since people pretty much only get to do it once, it's the one time in most lifetimes) that everyone in town gets to cheer for you.

This year, the honor went to a couple of people who have been community boosters for as long as I can remember. From School Board to Scouts, from the Chamber of Commerce to the Rotary Club, to the Library Board, the board of the Youth Center, the Horizons development committee, the Historical Society, the couple who were chosen this year have done it all. And throughout the ride, they got cheers at every turn. Oh. And when the parade was done, they went back to work at the Youth Center fundraiser bake sale.

Who were these people? They were my parents!

That's them in the back seat of the vintage Mustang, in this photo from the great folks at

The Scotland Journal.

And I waited until they were on vacation to talk about them, because I figure that gives me a week before they get a chance to read this, and by that time it will really be too late for them to do anything about it, right?