“Hey, Ben, we’re on the West Side subway,” I say.
“Yeah?” He takes a bored look out the window.
“We can just walk across town from Fourteenth Street.”
“With you I always end up walking. Hey, what about those extra tokens?”
“Aw, it’s only a few blocks. Let’s walk.”
Ben grunts, and he goes along with me. As we get near Union Square, there seem to be an awful lot of people around. In fact they’re jamming the sidewalk and we can hardly move. Ben frowns at them and says, “Hey, what goes?”
I ask a man, and he says, “Where you been, sonny? Don’tcha know there’s a parade for General Sparks?”
I remember reading about it now, so I poke Ben. “Hey, push along! We can see Sparks go by!”
“Quit pushing and don’t try to be funny.”
“Stupid, he’s a general. Test pilot, war hero, and stuff. Come on, push.”
“QUIT PUSHING! I got to watch out for these lizards!”
So I go first and edge us through the crowd to the middle of the block, where there aren’t so many people and we can get up next to the police barrier. Cops on horseback are going back and forth, keeping the street clear. No sign of any parade coming yet, but people are throwing rolls of paper tape and handfuls of confetti out of upper-story windows. The wind catches the paper tape and carries it up and around in all kinds of fantastic snakes. Little kids keep scuttling under the barrier to grab handfuls of ticker tape that blow to the ground. Ben keeps one eye on the street and one on Redskin and Brownie.
“How soon you think they’re coming?” he asks fretfully.
People have packed in behind us, and we couldn’t leave now if we wanted to. Pretty soon we can see a helicopter flying low just a little ways downtown, and people all start yelling, “That’s where they are! They’re coming!”
Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom past, and then a cop backing up a police car at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very surprising-looking thing. Before I’ve hardly got my eyes off that, the open cars come by. This guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car, waving with both hands. By the time I see him, he’s almost past. Nice-looking, though. Everyone yells like crazy and throws any kind of paper they’ve got. Two little nuts beside us have a box of Wheaties, so they’re busy throwing Breakfast of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is past, people push through the barriers and run in the street.