Thousands lined Naperville’s streets Monday morning, but as Josue Alvarado drew a brown and green tree on the asphalt with chalk, he colored for a crowd of one: his daughter.
“Fastest summer ever,” Alvarado’s wife, Kristen, said as the couple and their five children waited for the Jaycees’ Last Fling Labor Day Parade to begin. “It goes by faster and faster. We’re not ready to let go.”
The Alvarados seem to come to the parade with one more kid each year, the couple agreed. Their 7-week-old baby slept in the top slot of a double-decker stroller while three kids drew chalk masterpieces of their own and another swung from their arms.
With two full-time jobs and five different schedules, the Bolingbrook couple viewed the parade as one more chance to celebrate their ever-changing family, they said.
Attending the parade was perhaps an act of instinct for Roger Schaeffer, who has watched the festivities for three decades. The 73-year-old’s children have moved away. The crowd has gotten bigger and the politicians — a campaigning George W. Bush one year — come and go, he said.
But he keeps coming, he said as he walked to the Main Street corner opposite the Alvarados.
It’s a surprise that so few labor groups show up, a far cry from the union-dominated festivities held in Chicago, he noted. He likes the dance groups, a reminder of the years his girlfriend’s granddaughter performed in such a squad.
Farther up the route, Marie Shink watched her preschool-attending grandson sit on her son’s shoulders. A man sporting an Army veteran hat stopped his black Harley Davidson on the road as the spectacle began.
“It’s a great day for a parade, how about it!” he shouted.
A Fire Department delegation followed, splashing water out of red buckets onto the crowd lining the sidewalk in a miles-long line of lawn chairs and yard parties. Behind them came a high school band, a dance troupe and yet another fire truck, this time with its occupants tossing candy.
“They have such a fine community for a large town,” said Shink, a Naperville resident for around 20 years and a parade regular. “They just manage a small-town feel.”
Under the tree cover that lines the city’s residential roads, a woman in a grape costume high-fived attendees. A man dressed as a bottle of ranch followed close, and then came flag-waving U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, a Democrat from Naperville who is expected to run for reelection next year.
A group on another float boasted the banner and wear of Moldova before a Tesla Cybertruck led the way for the Kingdom Martial Arts school’s contingency, made up of a small nunchaku-wielding army sporting black belts and another crop of younger fighters.
The Good Shepherd Church’s band sang and danced as they passed, followed by the town’s Republican Party contingent, a gymnastics squad and a fleet of high school cheer teams shouting dueling allegiances.
Dawn Stroms wore a massive reproduction of the cover for the children’s book “Dog Man” — “a police officer man has been put into a dog’s body” — as she marched with folks representing the Naperville Public Library.
The best part of the day was seeing some of the kids who came in to read during the summer, she said as her bubble machine filled the air.
“We love the kids. We love everybody. We want them to read,” Stroms said.
