Every year, everybody decorates their bikes for the bike parade. We actually did this with my cousins every summer in Hovokan, Wisconsin.

So I did block parties as a kid and we always played the same games so I wanted to bring them to our neighborhood for you guys to play. You remember, right? The egg on the spoon race, the three-legged race, the pudding eating contest, and the egg toss…

And yeah, that first block party, that first time is was just six families and now I think last year forty families came. I’m not in charge of it anymore, but I think it was forty.

Now they even make invitations for it. Generally the moms in their 30s in the neighborhood plan it and then, when your kids get to be a certain age…you don’t do it anymore.

But yeah, it started as more of a picnic. Mr. Russel was always the Keebler Elf of the parade Remember that? He used to get that costume from Jewel.

But the tradition of the bike parade, I also brought back from when I was a kid. So all the neighborhood kids now get their bikes or scooters and decorate them and then do a parade around the neighborhood to start off the block party. And we always used to put playing cards with clothes pins in the spokes to get it to click, so you guys do that too. And streamers are big, too.

context: 

I went home, where these traditions all occur, for Easter this year. The informant, my mother, and I discussed the neighborhood tradition of the block party, which happens every summer, one on one.

thoughts: 

I was familiar with all the games and the bike parade tradition, because I took all of them very seriously but I never knew the context or that the history behind it came from my mom’s childhood, as well.

It is interesting how the leadership changes depending on the ages of the kids of the moms involved.