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I love a parade as long as I don't have to practice for it, march in it or be in the line up. I can still hear the orders being shouted out . . . "Okay people, the sooner you look good the sooner you get to go home. Heads up, straight lines, etc."
Whether Saint Patrick's Day in March or Columbus Day in October, it was too cold, too long a walk, and just too too much. (Ah memories!) Rememberingl the year the IHS snubbed the Cardinal at the steps of Cathederal because he cancelled his visit to IHS for the umpteenth year.
I recall those interschool games between the upper and lower classmen. The softball games where the underclassmen always seemed to outwit the seniors. Or the touch football rivalry that never got out of hand. This park could have easily been attached to the school's property and considered IHS athletic grounds. The amount of practice and activity by the IHS student body was more the memories could ever remember.
Nothing about the park has changed. On warm summer days you can catch an ad hoc game by express bus drivers trying to kill the time of day. The children's park was closed in the summer of 2001 for an overhaul.
The new Chinese Mission to the United Nations sits on First Avenue and 35th Street directly across the street from the children's part of the park. It replaced a convent that was used by some of the nuns at Immaculata High School.
More changes are in store for our old stomping grounds with the addition of more residental skyscapers are on the drawing board for the neighborhood.
Saint Vartan sits on Second Avenue and 34th Street. We would literally parade as a mob passed the Armenian Church several times a week in preparations for our parade days.
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