It's 11 o'clock on a drizzly Saturday morning at Winslow Green, the staging area for Bainbridge Island's annual Scotch Broom Parade. As the clock ticks closer to kickoff, the tension is, well, almost nonexistent. Cub Scout Pack 565, suitably punctual, mills around as the laid-back crowd slowly assembles.
People giggle and fall in.
A fire engine pulls up festooned in Scotch broom and whooping its siren, followed by a dark green 1948 Lincoln Continental V-12. On cue, main-street shoppers grin and cheer at this annual display of silliness. Ten minutes after it began, the parade is over. Once a spontaneous event, in contrast to the highly orchestrated Grand Old Fourth, this Kiwanian parade has been bitten by the planning bug that currently reigns on the fast-growing island. It now starts at a specific time, as announced in the twice-weekly Bainbridge Review.