San Clemente Fiesta Parade Whoops It Up

As the opening band in the San Clemente Fiesta Parade burst into music at 10 a.m. sharp Saturday, Pat Sperry, a high school teacher from Dana Point, leaned back in the lawn chair she had parked at the edge of El Camino Real and exclaimed:

“That’s why people go to parades! All that brass. Isn’t it beautiful?”

It wasn’t long, however, before the disciplined pomp of the marching band gave way to the meandering confusion of a procession of town luminaries, beauty queens, clowns, Boy Scouts, Shriners, cowboys and Indians, civic groups, mobile commercials and that most enduring cliche of Southern California life: long-legged girls in bikinis sunning themselves in the backs of pickup trucks that joined the parade.

But in the 90-minute procession, which celebrated the city’s 60th anniversary and attracted enough people to line both sides of El Camino Real from El Portal to Avenida Victoria, there was more than even that.

There were huge, lumbering Army tanks manned by scowling young men in camouflage. There was the League of Women Voters, which admonished the crowd: “Vote. Use it or lose it.” And there were the Women Aglow for Jesus, wearing fluffy white dresses, holding balloons with smiling faces and shepherding little girls dressed like presents.

“They’re in it every year,” said Arthetta Robinson, another schoolteacher from Dana Point, who sat in her own lawn chair next to Sperry.

After the parade, Linda Ainsworth, vice president of the Women Aglow chapter in San Clemente, explained that the group, which operates a halfway house for girls with drug and alcohol problems, marched in the parade “to lift up the name of Jesus.”

Another group with a cause was the San Clemente Animal Shelter, which had nine women in the parade, each leading a dog.

“Yay, the doggies!” screamed the crowd, which was in no mood to be serious.

And then there were the Shriners, gobs of them, marching in formation with their tassels swaying, whizzing around in undersized cars, on mini-motorcycles, on dune buggies; playing the organ, playing kazoos and just in general being as silly as grown men can be.

“These are the boys and their toys,” Sperry quipped as the Orange County Shriners’ Club ‘Cycos’ went spinning in circles on their mini-bikes down the street. A troop of Shriners with wands tucked under their arms came to a stop, and fell out of formation. “They just kinda wander around,” Sperry said gleefully. “Ha ha ha. I love it.”

Nearby sat Cindy Schorr, 30, a San Clemente resident who was Miss Costa Mesa in 1976. As this year’s Miss Costa Mesa floated by, Schorr reflected on what it was like when she was a beauty queen.

“I just felt real awkward up there in a one-piece, waving at everybody,” she said. But then, she added, “If they ever called me and wanted me to do it again, I’d go back.”

A flock of children from the Serra Parent Participation Preschool swept by on tricycles, bikes and wagons, one of them with a pacifier in his mouth.

“Aw, the one in the red wagon has got his binky,” cooed Sperry.

A troop of Indians from the upcoming La Christianita Pageant danced by, then more children, more ads, more Boy Scouts and Brownies and high school bands. And finally, a San Clemente fire truck trailing a bunch of clowning firemen. One of them aimed the fire hose and asked the crowd, “Should I give it to you?”

“Nooooooo!” they roared back.

And then he did.