Milwaukee has some quaint customs. Some of these customs relate to food such as brats and beer. Some of these customs relate to the Green Bay Packers. But the quaintest custom of all belongs to Circus Parade season.

The Great Circus Parade is at 2:00 p.m. this Sunday. In most cities, a big parade might cause people to gather early in the morning to stake out a place. In others, people might bring sleeping bags and sleep on the sidewalk (although most save such behavior for the young in ticket lines for concerts.) Here, staking a place begins on Wednesday or Thursday and is done with tape, with chalk, and, most amazingly, with lawn chairs.

As you walk through downtown, you see all sorts of people sitting among a set of lawn chairs with a cooler and, often, a hobby such as knitting or beading. Sometimes you see lawn chairs with no occupants at all. Most amazing, the lawn chairs just sit there. No one takes them. No one moves them. No one covers them with graffiti. Occasionally, someone mumbles about them but that�s the worst that happens. From now through Sunday, lawn chairs will line the streets of downtown unmolested.

What would an alien, either from another country or another planet, think of this city when it�s wearing its seasonal lawn chair finery? Would the alien stroll among the lawn chairs trying to determine what sorts of people might sit in them? Would the alien stroll and try to figure what all of them were for?

Every year, someone suggest that this spontaneous lawn chair festival should end. They suggest that the territorial staking of claims is unfair to those with smaller families who cannot man a station and to older people who cannot live out in the open air for days at a time, among others. They suggest that the lawn chairs all over crowd the sidewalk and are dangerous. But the lawn chairs are as Milwaukee as the Packers or beer and brats. They are not going anywhere soon.

Forget all the old mottos. Forget my favorite: �Milwaukee, a Great Place on a Great Lake.� Forget the worst: �Milwaukee, Genuine American.� Let�s go for the obvious: �Milwaukee, the City of Lawn Chairs.�

LAST YEAR: Save Me

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Copyright 2006 by Ellen