Prescott 4th of July

FRIENDLY PINES

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE...

PRESCOTT ON THE 4TH OF JULY

★★★★ 4TH Prescott ★★★★★ July 4 6:30 AM.

On Mount Vernon and Gurley streets, in Prescott, Arizona, the old Victorian homes gleam under the shade of huge old elm trees. They are, along with the elegant 19th century courthouse in the square, with its picture album bandstand and gazebo, part of an age long past and often forgotten.

But Prescott remembers. It treasures its territorial image, especially on this warm holiday morning in July.

By 7:00 a.m., along Willis and Cortez and Montezuma, turn-of-the-century store-fronts are getting their final touches of red, white, and blue bunting, as people begin lining up three deep along the curbs and tethering children to bobbing balloons. Red and green and yellow and pink, they catch the cool morning breeze. The air tastes of vanilla. It smells of hot coffee.

Then from the back of the crowd somebody yells what everyone's been waiting to hear: "It's time for the parade."

And far back along its route, the Frontier Days Fourth of July Parade readies itself to march into history, as other parades much like this one have been doing in this town for 115 years.

There was a time, another lifetime, when Harry Stevens lived in New York. To look at him today in Prescott, pacing around the Frontier Days announcer's stand, you'd never believe he ever walked streets hemmed in by concrete canyons. His cow-boy boots are scuffed; his Wranglers are comfortably worn; his oversized rodeo belt bears his name, and his hat is the hat of a man who has sat in the saddle. No Polo cowboy is Harry Stevens.

Stevens is "Mr. Prescott' during the Fourth of July festivities. No one seems to care that in 23 years he has never replaced his Easternisms with cowboy twang. He doesn't drawl out his "e's" to "a's." He doesn't say "fer" for "for." "Shucks" and "aw gosh" aren't in his vocabulary. But it doesn't matter, not when Stevens finally gets his microphone working and gets ready to welcome the crowd.

At 7:30 a.m. people are already camped in lines stretching from the Yavapai County courthouse lawn to the curb of Willis Street. No one is restless. Everyone is content to wait for Harry and the parade.

"No one even tries to compete with Prescott on the Fourth of July," Stevens tells me later.

While Harry Stevens is checking on his announcing details, down the street and up the hill a bit, the 27th annual Pancake Breakfast is in full swing at the Prescott Congregational Church. It's a male-only cooking affair, and volunteers have been there since 4:30 a.m. Now, as the crowds line up, waiting for pancakes to be flipped and chairs to be vacated, the Reverend John Hollowell walks around greeting the crowd. He's in his best Western finery, wearing a silver and turquoise bolo tie in the shape of a cross and a big cowboy hat.

We find a table to sit at and join a group. Everybody looks up and smiles and introduces themselves. In Prescott, when it's time to celebrate Independence Day, no one eats alone. We coat the pancakes with butter and syrup and dig in.

When Jennie Huddleston asks about my notebook, I tell her I'm writing a story about all this. "My first Fourth in Prescott was in 1922. The parade was the same kind of parade we have today," she says. "Except we had wilder cowboys then. And everybody came to town."

Everybody still comes to town. It's estimated that 50,000 people pour into Prescott for the fun, most deserters from Phoenix and other communities in the super-heated Valley of the Sun. They come in caravans up the freeway. They snake up the back way through Skull Valley, taking the Iron Springs turn-off. They move into every available motel room. They take every open parking space. They come in stiff jeans and cut-offs, in sneakers and sandals and boots. They come ready to wave flags and cheer floats and whistle and laugh and applaud. They come because some things-like birth-days and Christmas and the Fourth of July-should not change.

There was a time, an easier Thornton Wilder kind of era, when Independence was a cause for(Opposite page; clockwise from top, left) Boy Scouts, from Tenderfoot to Eagle, firemen from every engine company in town, plus the elementary school honor band, the rodeo queen, dancers and disco roller skaters, flag-twirlers, motorized Shriners, and hundreds of just plain folks pass beneath the judges' stand during Prescott's Fourth of July Parade.

(Below) A young rider with a grip of iron prepares to ride out a bull's wrath at Prescott's Fourth of July Tournament of Cowboys. The "world's oldest rodeo" has been a class performance since 1888.

(Opposite page; clockwise from top, left) Flags and cheering flagwavers predominate at the Independence Day Parade. And, as the youngsters opposite and at bottom find, there's even a special kind of fun in just being there, even if you don't get the best seat. Well, almost.

★★★★ 4TH Prescott

celebration in every town and hamlet from one coast to the other. Everywhere, along every Main Street, store fronts would be routinely draped in bunting. Mothers would be up by six, peeling endless piles of potatoes for the salad. Kids would spend hours weaving colored crepe paper through their bicycle spokes. Fathers in shirtsleeves would reminisce about the big firecrackers they shot off as kids. And everyone loved a parade. But then the century turned and the pace of life quickened. Minor holidays got moved to more convenient times. Some were misplaced in the process, and soon it became difficult to find time to celebrate at all. As the years went by, the Fourth of July fizzled and all but died. Everywhere but in Prescott. There Americana lives. Harry Stevens addresses the crowd now, introducing them to the judges, then gives the signal to begin the parade.

With noise and color and wonder and delight, it winds through the center of town just like it has every year since 1888. Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, the Prescott Elementary Honor Band, the Frontier Days Rodeo Queen and her attendants, horses and motorized Shriners and horses, bands and floats and cowboys and horses and Indians and more horses and bands. Indian dancers and disco roller skaters and hopeful candidates and balloonmen and flag twirlers... the parade moves on. J. C. Trujillo, the Grand Marshall, draws an ovation as Stevens says, "Here's the world's champion bareback rider and native Prescottonian." Then the parade halts as entries start to perform in front of the judges, prizes to be awarded later. Red-suited, pot-bellied "Bud and his Taste Buds" jiggle around on the pavement. The high school band with high-stepping, mini-skirted flagtwirlers stop smartly on the downbeat in front of the judges' stand. The kids perform a spirited patriotic march. The crowd claps. And just as the drummer starts up, a plaid-shirted, cowboyhatted 17 year old calls out to his flagbearing girlfriend. She misses a strut, fumbles her flag, and blushes clear to her knees. Rodd Wolff and his stunt horse, Twerp, prance in front of the bleachers. Twerp performs; Wolff takes a bow. Hoots and whistles greet the Notorious Women of the Olde West: Poker Face Alice, Baby Pearl Younger, Squirrel Tooth Alice, Belle Starr, Little Breeches, Madame Moustache, Crazy Horse Lil, and Lola Montez. All get noisy approval. Still to come: the Original Lone Ranger and the first Rolls Royce Corniche ever made. It's homegrown and down-home, where folks line up to applaud their neighbors. At the too-quick conclusion of the parade, Stevens announces the Beard Judging Contest. The award for the best allaround whiskers goes to a man from Los Angeles. Los Angeles? The words drift through the crowd, become a joke to giggle over, until they're lost in the hubbub of the general retreat to the vast cool oasis of the courthouse lawn. Miraculously, blankets appear, patching the carpet of green with a kaleidoscope of colors. It's time to stretch out and think about the rodeo still to come, while the kids go off to play... or to drift over to sample the Indian fry bread, the watermelon, the cotton candy. But most of the people are just content to sit around and talk, neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend. Just as it should be on the Fourth of July.