Town Has a Grand Old Time

Hank Landsberg was standing amid the hubbub of a Sierra Madre side street Monday morning, ticking off the list of regulars lining up for the city’s Fourth of July parade.

There were Rotarians and Cub Scouts and Shriners in fezzes. There were marching bands, Model A enthusiasts and ROTC kids practicing their war faces.

And then there was the local belly dancer.

“It seems like there’s always been a belly dancer,” said Landsberg, the parade’s longtime organizer. “Why? I don’t know -- because she’s here.”

For as long as anyone can remember, this San Gabriel Mountains town of 10,500 has been putting on a popular Fourth of July parade. And with a few notable exceptions, it has offered a slice of Americana that seems more Midwestern than Southern California.

“I spent three years in a small town in Huntington, Ind., where Dan Quayle came from,” said Allen Wolff, a 20-year Sierra Madre resident and parade volunteer. “And this is Indiana. Here we are in big-city L.A., and you have a small-town thing like this.”

For Los Angeles County -- a metropolis hip to Persian TV shows, Oaxacan cooking and Khmer rock bands -- the parade feels nearly exotic. It has also become a celebration of this 97-year-old city, which takes pride in its small-town charm and sense of tradition.

The singer David Byrne once said that heaven was a place where nothing ever happens, and many Sierra Madreans would probably concur. They like the fact that there is little room for development, since the city covers just over three square miles east of Pasadena. They like that the trajectory of the 210 Freeway misses town by about half a mile and ensures a certain quiet.

One of the nastiest local controversies bubbled up a few years ago, when a new Starbucks threatened the hometown coffeehouse.

The parade, held this year one day after July 4, got off to a rough start when a float with the theme “Monkey Mischief” accidentally backed up into a group of bystanders, sending three people to the hospital with minor injuries. Two others were treated at the scene and released.

Once the show got rolling, it seemed that anyone who wasn’t in the parade was lined up at curbside, cheering for their friends and neighbors.

John Werthwein, a former Sierra Madre resident who now lives in Temple City, ran into the street to greet the family of John Grijalva, who was being honored as a “Sierra Madre Older American.”

A few minutes later, Werthwein yelled to the bass player in a truck-borne blues band. Turns out it was Glenn Lambdin, 48, the former mayor.

“That was the best man in our wedding,” said Werthwein, 49. “I think he likes the bass more than he likes politics.”

Many onlookers said this Fourth of July weekend took on a particular poignancy because of the war in Iraq. But the parade was mostly a light-hearted affair that shared some of the absurdist humor of Pasadena’s Doo Dah Parade.

Hence the “City of Sierra Madre Varmint Council” -- a group traveling with a donkey wearing an Uncle Sam hat. And the Unknown Band, who wore grocery sacks on their heads and played “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on kazoos. And the Sierra Madre City College marching band, which for years has represented a school that only exists in their collective imagination.

They fell in line along with local nabobs and veterans and kids in strollers. The Sierra Madre Chorale sang patriotic standards and a country band called Horses on Astroturf played the songs of American troubadours such as Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt. Members of a Corvette enthusiasts club revved their engines, and royalty from the Rose Parade offered polished wrist waves. The local search-and-rescue team marched by with their backpacks, handing out candy.

The onlookers who cheered them on wore straw boaters and USA-themed leisure wear and death-metal T-shirts. All in all, it was a pageant as chaotic, amusing and diverse as the democracy it celebrated.

Landsberg said the event was especially important during wartime. “It makes you realize how important our way of life is and how you shouldn’t take it for granted,” he said. “Because you don’t know how long it’ll last. You hope forever -- but it’s a different world we live in now.”