I was amazed. I also felt badly

for my old coworkers at The Citizen, who I imagined had proudly sent the

Friday paper off to the printer Thursday chock full of great local news

and election results, only to realize with horror that they had forgotten

to even mention Veterans Day. No parade information or cute little flag

with "Happy Veterans Day" on the front page, nothing. None of

the other local papers had anything either.

I was even more amazed when

not even the Atlanta paper or Atlanta's own CNN made mention of Veterans

Day on their web sites. Apparently CNN.com and Yahoo News had no room

on their full web pages for honoring our veterans, even though most of

the top news stories Monday and even Tuesday morning were about deaths

(of veterans, I may add) in Iraq.

Several attempts to search

the web were unsuccessful at shedding any light on where a local parade

might be, or if there would even be one this year. At least I did find

a Veterans Day teacher's guide and Letter from the President on the

government's web page, so I could show my son something. Even my

home school group's activity calendar had no listing of a parade

or special event. At one point, after seeing parade information for plenty

of other cities, I turned to ask my husband, "How far a drive is

it to Augusta?"

(Here is a pause to admit I

was searching for this information late Monday night, when I couldn't

phone the local veterans clubs or the one listing I did finally find on

the web for the Atlanta Veterans Day parade planning committee.)

Miraculously on Tuesday morning

I finally found a listing for the Atlanta parade (hooray!) buried on the

WSB web site, with the 11 a.m. time and even directions. Somewhere amongst

my web searches I had also discovered that here in Fayette County, the

children of Brooks Elementary School would also be holding a little parade

at 9 a.m.

So my pre-K son and I set off

Tuesday morning on our field trip, dressed in red, white and blue with

Old Glory in hand, and singing our small repertoire of patriotic songs.

First stop: Brooks. After a

late start, the small parade began at the elementary school, wound around

about four blocks to "downtown," then doubled back and returned

to the school.

We were pleased with the classes'

efforts: Adorably decorated kids proudly paraded floats made from wagons,

including two Army tanks, a U.S.S. Enterprise aircraft carrier, and more

than one Uncle SAM. There was a police car, a fire truck (driven by Rick

Ryckeley, who also writes columns for The Citizen) and an authentic Army

jeep and trailer.

After the Army jeep and before

the children's classes came nine Shriner vehicles, eight convertibles

and one that looked like a modified ice cream truck, plus some Shriner

clowns. (Can anyone tell me what they were doing in that parade, anyway?

If the Shriners were all veterans, at least they could have had a little

sign on their cars saying so.)

As they passed by the second

time in their red fezzes, I leaned over to my son (whom I had been so

diligently teaching about military and patriotic stuff for several days)

and mentioned that no, those were not military hats. All that aside, it

was a wonderful effort and we enjoyed the parade.

Then we raced