Joe - My Son - Asked Me To Write This

 It was a parade, as I remember it.

The city was Portland and it was an old parade that had been exhumed from the dustbin of history.

Marykana, or some such name it was.

It was a prequel event to some much more durable Portland tradition whose name also eludes me as I write this post.

And I have Googled and Binged and not found a hit.

For that name.

Of event.

In Portland.

So I must have imagined it.

All the more auspicious for a related story, I guess.

So Jerry had this car.

That's not his, but it was of that type.

Jerry and I were fraternity brothers, so I knew what he was thinking.

"If I cut off the top of my car I have a perfect mobile platform - if only I can see out, and if only the motor continues, and if only the gear shift keeps working, I can enter a float.

For us.

Portland State College.

(He and I had both been accepted to USAF OTS, starting imminently, so he was more than willing to sacrifice his very old car for a festival.)

In the Marykana Parade.

So we took the Mercury to Doug's family's metal fab shop and took the top off of the Mercury.

And then we hung a lattice of suspension on the hulk of Mercury remaining such that we could put a cosmetic superstructure on it.

There was a lot of welding.

And beer drinking.

And laughing.

The ultima thule was a petroleum driven float in the Marykana Parade that had a Viking boat silhouette hung on its lattice of suspension.

And a lot of young men and young women.

On the platform that spanned the Mercury.

In what we perceived to be Viking garb.

Portland State was/were/is/are the Vikings.

We had a lot of fun.

In the Marykana Parade.

Of that year - whenever it was, or if it ever, indeed, was.

All those years ago.

But that has been lost to history.