Picturing the Past 137: Parading up North Main

Posted Tuesday, November 29, 2011, at 3:17 PM

Central High School's band marches toward the Shelbyville square during the 1969 Homecoming Parade. (T-G file photo)

Here comes the Shelbyville Central High School band, leading the 1969 Homecoming Parade. Back then, when SCHS was on Elm Street, parades started at the school and apparently went up and around the square. But where did it go, and end, beyond that point?

Go here for a larger view.

Shelbyville hasn't had a homecoming parade for years, since an injury occurred during, I think, the 1980s. Things changed when the current school was built.

I don't remember Christmas parades, or parades for anything other than homecoming or maybe Veterans Day (and I may be forgetting some), until around the early 1980s. I have uncovered some T-G negatives from what I think was a Veterans Day parade in 1959, complete with some sort of rocket from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, being paraded up North Main.

And look at that view down North Main Street and surrounding areas. I see so many advertising signs for businesses no longer around, and at leasat one parking lot now occupied by a building -- yet in so many ways the street still looks much the same.

Parades today: Remember, if you're going to this year's Christmas Parade, the "traditional" parade route today goes north instead of south on North Main and out Madison Street.

Picturing the Past is featured each Tuesday in this blog. Reader contributions are welcome.

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I'm gonna jump back a few more years, to the late 50's. I was a trombone player in the CHS marching band for 4 years. Our first band director was Mr. Wattenbarger, followed by Mr. Horton (for only 1 year I think), and them Mr. Hull.

If memory serves me, the route of the homecoming parade was to line up behind the school near the old FFA building and march down Union, turn right on N. Main, cirle the square and come back down N. Main and disband back at the school. It was a pretty tiring march in those hot band uniforms.

-- Posted by marnold1118 on Mon, Dec 5, 2011, at 12:38 PM

I know we had a homecoming parade in 1982- 1985 not sure other than that I graduated in 85.It went around the route the Christmas parade still goes now.

-- Posted by Thatsmystory on Fri, Dec 2, 2011, at 9:30 AM

Some other photos of the parade show homecoming attendants riding in convertibles. Maybe the majorettes were in the homecoming court.

-- Posted by David Melson on Wed, Nov 30, 2011, at 10:38 AM

Now....wait a minute! Can this CHS band be marching without a front row of high-stepping majorettes? This would never have happened in 1954. Guess we had a little more pizzazz back in the fifties.

-- Posted by steadyeddie on Wed, Nov 30, 2011, at 1:17 AM

Check out that 1969 price of gasoline at Consumers when there was only two grades of gasoline (regular or high test). Both grades of gasoline was in the high 90s in octane.

-- Posted by leeiii on Tue, Nov 29, 2011, at 4:44 PM

David Melson

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David Melson is a copy editor and staff writer for the Times-Gazette.

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