We have a big parade every year on the 4th of July.
It's the biggest event in my town every year.
There are 500 people in the parade and 500 people who are watching the parade.
We have exactly enough people to have a parade.
If someone stays home, they're kind of ruining the parade.
Here's what I love about the parade is after it's over nobody leaves nobody has anywhere to go There's only one suitable street in my town for parade and when the parade gets out of town It doesn't know what to do either and there's this moment of confusion and then it just flips around and it comes back Everybody just watches the other side of the parade again
Speaking of parades We we're gonna talk 4th Fest here It's one of the biggest events in Racine all year long and a Clemente who is the 4th Fest president with us and the Jake Love doll who is the parade chair so So you are and you're in charge of everything 4th Fest the fireworks the the whole Miguel you're in charge of all that, right?
Correct,
and you're in charge just making sure that parade goes off on time.
That's my job I've seen behind the scenes there because we
been, I've been in a lot of parades and it's organized chaos.
It really is.
Exactly.
And when it starts up, what you see when it comes down the street is almost perfection.
I mean, the way it's supposed to be, but to get to that point, give us a little background.
Now, when do you start preparing for the new parade in 2027?
July 5th.
That's what I thought.
It's like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
The Friday after Thanksgiving, they start preparing again for it.
How many floats you have this year?
How many how many participants not floats, but participants?
We've got a little over 150 entries.
Oh, yeah.
It's bigger every year.
Yeah.
Everybody wants to be in it.
That's right.
And that's about three hours.
It takes about three hours to get down the parade row.
Yeah.
Except now the pre parade is deafening at one point.
I mean,
the
fire engines, the motorcycles, the deafening.
How do you get all these cities to participate?
These municipalities and take all their fire engines to police cars there because.
You know, they're all here with a, if there's an emergency, they won't be there.
Yeah.
So, um, a lot of municipalities have been doing this for years.
So it's just kind of a rubber stamp, as you will.
Um, but they're there every year and we sent them down at the beginning during the pre parade to make sure they can get back to their departments and where they need to be for, um, servicing their communities.
Now, how old's the parade this year?
90, 90th annual as what we know it today.
However.
We have found through our research that Racine has had a parade since 1844, before Wisconsin was even a state.
You don't count that though,
right?
No, we're discounting our, you know, this kind of day and age, 90 years.
I mean, the way we look at it is, you know, we're just, Fourth Fest became the stewards of Racine's parade in 1937.
So Racine's parade is one of the five oldest continually operated parades in the nation.
I was about to say, is it also one of the biggest,
right in the Midwest?
It's the biggest in the Midwest, yeah.
Three hours.
Yeah.
We were talking before we got on the air.
There was one of the comedians was saying, his small town, they had the parade stay on one block stationery.
The bands played, the dancers danced, and everybody stayed there, and the people just walked by.
I think that's
great.
And that way you just had one block for the whole parade.
Everybody just walked around it.
So how do people get in the parade?
People always say, well, how do these people get in?
What do they call you or you call them?
How does that work?
Well, it used to be calling, but we have changed to an online process just in, you know, in today's world.
We did that a few years ago.
So in about April, the application opens up on our website and people literally submit an application to get in, have an entry.
How do you separate them because you can't have all the bands together.
You can't have all the floats together.
You can't have all the, you know, similar
thing.
Who separates all that stuff?
So we actually, it takes us about three hours to put the lineup together and we really take our time and make sure that we're.
not stacking musical entries on top of each other that were spacing things out and that the overall quality of the parade is, you know, a great viewing experience for everybody.
You know, we take into account every piece of their entry and what they're doing, their performances to make sure there's a good balance in the parade.
Now, I was at the captain's meeting
last week
or the week before.
And at the beginning you say, this is what your float should look like.
This is how your entry should not
look.
You know, when I want a rusty old, you know, pickup truck pulling somebody along.
And some of the floats are, it takes, it must take a long time to put those together because they are really, really nice.
And a lot of the big companies do it because it's expensive to put a float together.
It
doesn't have to be
though.
So we've been telling, because a lot of the big companies
aren't doing floats like they used to.
We have a handful back this year, which we're so excited about.
But a lot of nonprofits have been jumping on board.
You know, Curling Club comes to mind, Moose Lodge, Roma Lodge.
And it doesn't have to be expensive.
You can kind of just, you know, use some duct tape in the background.
Nobody's going to see the back of it, you know, or the
inside of it.
So it doesn't have to be expensive.
We get a classic car, a Lover Ghani, who does our Sunday morning show, Music of the Stars, is going to be there.
And he has his fleet of classic cars he owns from the fifties and forties.
And they're in mint condition.
I was with him last year in one of the cars.
I noticed one thing about people in the forties and fifties.
They weren't over six feet tall.
I got in there and said, where am I going to put
my
knees in this car?
Because it was a bench seat.
It's not like today where you can everybody can have their own thing.
And he moved the bench seat all the way up.
My knees were against the club compartment for the whole length of the trip there.
So the parade kicks off at 830 the pre parade and that but it was a kickoff from.
Gould and Maine.
All right.
Right by the zoo there.
Yeah.
Gould and Maine and it makes its way down to
14th Street.
That's Johnson Wax.
That's S.C.
Johnson.
Yep.
And
it officially ends at Grand Avenue, but it kind of scoots along another block there.
Am I the last person who calls it Johnson Wax?
No.
No.
Because I know they're not Johnson Wax.
I always call them, people say you mean SC Johnson.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
And is it expensive to put this parade on money-wise?
Yeah, it is.
We have to raise 100% of the funds every single year.
So there are amazing sponsors out there in this community from individual donations to some of the major companies like SC Johnson.
CNH and sinkerator educators credit union.
I mean, just amazing support so that we can do this.
Let's talk about the possibilities.
Now, if it rains, it's rain or shine.
However, if it's lightning,
you delay it.
We'll delay it.
We will not cancel the parade unless it's an extreme situation.
But if there's, you know, dangerous weather, we will delay.
Now, if it's if it's a hot day like in the 90s,
And these people, someone like the mayor or whoever will be walking the marchers for, you know, two hours, two and a half hours, whatever it is, coming down the main street.
I have a lot of water.
Yeah,
it's just, we just tell everybody, water, water, water, comfortable shoes.
I mean, that's appropriately
for the weather plan accordingly.
Right.
Most, most of the people are going to bring a small cooler with them with water, Gatorade to hydrate.
Um, you know, so we instruct them to do that.
And of course, Lou doesn't have Eric can just think of a 1940s
car.
Right.
But it's still better than having to walk two and a half miles in it.
This is exciting.
It's going to be a fun year.
Every 4th of July, you know, now what we do is on our front strip there, we have people, relatives and friends who want to come over and could we use your front.
Sure.
Now, you cannot set anything up on your lawn until five AM.
Five AM.
Because I've seen people at 4.45 set up, police come by, take it down, and they have to because people will be there all night on your front lawn and you don't want that.
So we go out there at five o'clock, put all our chairs out.
And then we have our friends and relatives come and they use our front lawn and so forth.
But that's one of the things about being on Main Street.
You get to do all that.
And you're right up front.
Now, the parade is on television as well.
Yes.
How'd you get channel 24 involved?
So we've been doing that for over a decade now on channel 24.
It used to be broadcast on car 25 when we had a local channel.
When that went away, there was a big push to make sure that we continue to broadcast it on TV for people who can't make it out to the parade for a variety of reasons.
We've really developed a strong relationship with channel 24 and actually the fourth best parade is their number one rated show all year long.
Is it
really
good for
you?
Yeah.
Good for
you.
I know I tape it.
And I have, I just got, I had like the last five or five of them, but my DVR got loaded up.
So I started eliminating the bottom ones.
But what we do is in the dead of winter, when it's 10 below zero, put on the parade.
Oh, that's such
a nice idea.
And for those of you who use YouTube, we have a YouTube channel.
And you can watch all of them.
Now, this is good because if the parade goes over 24 cuts it because they have other responsibilities at the end.
But the YouTube channel keeps going with the parade.
What do you have to put in there?
Just 4th Fest?
I think it's
Racine 4th
Fest.
Yeah, you'll find it.
And then the
library has a couple archived from back in the 30s.
So that's kind of neat too, to watch the old, old ones.
So the band, the Racine Concert Band, who was in the parade, one of the people they put out a book once and the band played on.
And in there is the 4th of July parade from 1962.
And the person who took the photo took a picture of my house from 1962.
And there's some strangers sitting on my porch in 1962.
But it's kind of weird to see your house with some other people sitting on your porch.
But it was, it was that picture was taken.
Lots of history.
We're having a chat about 4th Fest, 4th of July is coming up Saturday.
Anna Clemente, 4th Fest president, who was with me, Jake, loved all the parade chairs here.
It's not a Saturday this year.
Is that making any big difference?
Fourth of July.
It just makes for a really fun, long weekend.
Yeah, because nobody's got a word to get up in the morning.
No excuse.
When it's on a Sunday, it's tough because then
you got church.
So that's the one caveat is we always have the parade is always on the fourth of July, unless it falls on Sunday, which will be next year.
Then it moves to Monday, the fifth.
OK.
And we
can do that.
OK, let's talk about some other things here with dealing with the parade.
What's the theme this year?
Happy 250 America
250 years remember one of the radio stations I worked at when it was the 200th We did a big thing and I said 200.
I will never see the 250th here.
I am folks 250th and One of the the highlights of the parade is the float with the Iwo Jima flag.
Yeah, I don't know how The men on that float do it.
I don't know how they stand there in that one position now They do move occasionally.
I never see them
But I don't know how that with that heavy makeup on it's amazing and the standard that position
that's got to be
a
backbreaker Especially in hot weather like we're gonna have this year.
So who who who were the men on those floats doing that?
So that is the Marine Corps League.
Oh, they actually are part of the Marine Corps.
Okay.
Yeah.
Wow.
So
and then we have other
living memorial floats
and that
makes Racine's parade unique as well.
Yeah, we're the only parade in the country that has bronze living memorial floats across three wars.
Wow.
So the boys of 76 were honorary grand marshal this year.
I think they've been in the parade ever since the beginning.
Am I making that?
They've actually been in the parade longer than Fourth Fest has existed.
So they had their debut in the 20s and
The boys of 76 float, which we named as our honor, grand marshal, which we felt was fitting for this year.
Right.
I mean,
how do you pick somebody for this year?
A big year like this.
Um, we thought that was fitting, but they are actually the oldest continually used parade flow in the country as well.
You get that uncle Sam guy who's on the stilts every year.
How he walks with those things.
He walked past my house.
I looked up at him once and I don't look up at too many people.
And I say, wow, what
was he
doing?
They're out pretty
quick with those long strides.
Yeah.
And let's talk about the sponsors for the parade.
Yes, I mentioned a few before, but I have to also show to out that 4th Fest parade is presented by Festival Foods and also our 4th Fest fireworks are presented by Festival Foods fireworks.
So we are so grateful for them and everything that they do for us and other communities actually around Wisconsin to support the 4th of July.
And fireworks are not cheap.
You know, these are not firecrackers you buy down the block.
They're thousands and thousands of dollars to put these fireworks shows on because these guys are experts at it.
And they put on a beautiful choreographed show every year.
I don't love watching it.
The City of Racine is very supportive with our fireworks as well.
And this year, because it is a special year, we are able to have
than be bigger and better.
So you're, you are definitely going to want to see the fireworks this year.
My apologies to all the dogs in the neighborhood who will be hiding in the closet.
We have our neighbor's pit bull come over every year and he just, she just hides in the closet, waits for it to be
over
and just, you can't find her.
And I feel bad for her because they're so
frightened of these fireworks.
The fireworks this year are going to be extra special though.
They're going to be amazing.
This is a once in a lifetime in Racine thing, right?
So the fireworks, the show you're going to see this year is about twice the size of what it normally is.
And I did have one of the years
ago, I had the people who put on the fireworks that have been the studio and it is amazing what they go through.
Now it's electronic.
They have they just they have it all wired
in.
They
push a button and boom, it goes.
And they're on them.
They're off on the pier.
They're away from everybody there.
And the people in the boats, they probably get a good shot at it.
I was wondering what it looks like from an airplane because you're traveling across America at.
at dark, you know, nine o'clock at night, and you must be seeing it all over America as you travel, because it's constantly going.
But I was a kid, I was a kid, the fireworks were at the drive-in movie theater.
Every third of July.
And one year we were sitting on the hood, and one of the, it wasn't as sophisticated as it is today.
It shot a rocket up, and the burning rocket came down right on my father's car.
We were sitting on the hood, my brother and I, and right on the roof of the car,
and it's smoldering in a nice little circle on the car.
Oh my goodness.
But it didn't hit anybody.
Rather, it hit the car than people.
But we still see the pinwheels of the drive-in.
They don't have pinwheels anymore, do they?
Remember the pinwheels?
Yeah.
We don't see that too often
anymore, no.
Yeah.
I used to love the pinwheels of the drive-in movie theater.
All right, so let's do a quick review here.
The fourth festival rate is on the 4th of July this year, where it should be the 200th anniversary celebration of the theme, 250 years old America.
That's
going
to be great.
It's the
the biggest parade in the Midwest.
And it's 90 years old this year.
It'll be on channel 24 on your cable system or wherever you watch whatever.
And if you miss it there, it'll be preserved on the YouTube channel.
Just Google fourth fest parade and you'll find it on there.
Yeah.
Make sure it's this year's parade.
Yeah,
exactly.
The bogus parade from last year.
Make sure you got the real McCoy.
And, of course, the fireworks are on the lakefront at North Beach.
And get there early, it gets very crowded.
It
does.
And get a good, get a blanket and watch it.
I mean, there's a tree there.
Don't worry, they're going to be up in the air.
They're not going to be right in front of the tree for you.
So what am I missing?
Missing anything?
Actually, the fireworks will be broadcast this year on Channel 24
as well.
So
9 p.m.
you can tune into that and enjoy those.
I've never been to the New York City ones, but the ones for the Statue of Liberty.
I
imagine with that in the background of the fireworks, especially on the 250th
birthday,
you know, we are watching all the American Revolutionary DVDs now.
I'm going to pick up the Ken Burns one today.
And it's a good year to look back at this country on how we got separated.
from I say it because British people are nice people.
But we got separated from the British people and sent them packing.
But you watch the Civil War, the American Revolutionary War.
There were actually nine American Revolutionary War veterans buried in Racine County.
Once in Union Grove where I'll be buried.
And there is a mound cemetery.
You should take a walk to the cemeteries, find out where they are.
Because these are the people that did it.
I mean, there are some countries where you can't even talk on the radio
without permission.
Those guys are the reason why we get to celebrate the parade today, as well as everybody who's served throughout the history of this country.
And we'll be talking with a lady from the DAR, which is the Daughters of the American Revolution.
I forget what date she's coming in, and we'll talk to her.
And she will tell you all about how Wisconsin played a role in this.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Good luck guys.
Thank you.
So you take a lot of volume a lot of
So
what time do you get
up on the 4th of July for this thing?
I'm usually up at about 3 30 Okay, it's a good start I'm more
5 a.m.
That's probably
a normal time for you done.
Well, you know what it is though it by the time you get up It is nothing more you can do
right.
Yeah, you just got to make sure everything's in place because you did all the work already
I keep saying the train is in the station and on the 4th when it's
When it's on the tracks, it'll happen.
Well, we do do a prayer every morning and I pray for the safety of everybody in this parade.
Nobody falls off any floats.
Nobody gets in the way.
No throwing candy at kids.
So they run into the street and no dogs in the parade this year.
I know pets in the parade.
I mean,
we've had them in the past.
I don't know that we have any this year though.
Some
people might have them in their car.
And it'll be all dressy and it'll be real nice.
I love the parade.
I remember
one year I sat, I wanted to try it one year and I sat in my picture window in my living room to watch the parade.
Not the same.
Yeah.
You gotta hear it.
Yeah, you gotta hear it be there with people and I love it every year.
Oh, that's so nice of you to say.
So one quick last story.
So in my hometown, I was in the 4th of July parade and you could see the parade in the movie born on the 4th of July with Tom Cruise.
It took place in Massa Piqua, my hometown.
And they start off with a parade in Massapeak, where now it's not really the Hollywood version of.
But in the real parade, I was in the Little League.
And the Little League was last in the parade.
Then they went in order of teams.
My team was in last place because the coach's son was pitching, didn't know how to pitch.
So we were in last place.
Then they put you according to height.
So I was the last person in the entire parade.
My mother made me wear dress pants and a dress shirt, dress shoes.
All the other
kids were in jeans and their
little
shirts.
I was dressed up.
I look like one of the corporate executives.
Oh, I
love it.
The nine-year-old corporate executive in the parade.
And that was the parade I marched in.
And I went, I said, everybody's in their jeans.
And I look like I'm ready for a wedding.
I'm going to somebody's wedding.
You know, I'm a guest in a wedding.
So that was my big 4th July parade back in the 60s.
Well, thank you very much.
Thanks for all the work you do.
Thank
you.
Thank you.
I know it's a tough thing.
It's a lot of responsibility.
It takes a lot of time, too.
Yep.
Yeah.
It's like a second full-time job.
Right now, yes.
Okay.
Well, thank you guys for coming in.
Anna Clementi, 4th Fest president, and Jake Lovdoll, who's the parade chair.
Which is more work?
Oh, Jake by far.
Yeah, they call Anna and they say, well, what about, here's Jake's phone number.
Thank you guys for coming and thank you very much for that little keepsake.
I
can't wait for this.
It'll be nice.
