"Happy St. Patrick's Day" she shrieked to our little entourage of nine baby carriages, a couple dozen parents and normal people, just a few of the thousands who lined Las Vegas Boulevard Downtown to watch the parade Saturday.
Oh, she was giddy, her freshly tinted hair glistening in the perfectly sunny day. She smiled and waved like the prom queen she never was, sitting between two people in the back of a spit-shined convertible.
Perky. Positively giddy. And she couldn't get a laugh, a smile, a clap.
For the first time in the overly long parade—walking advertisements to see The Platters or The Drifters or some other oldster group do not a float make; neither do flatbed trucks with men and women of the Tall Cops Association looking down upon us; or even the hundreds of octogenarian Shriners driving those tiny cars—no claps, no smiles, a few derisive chuckles.
Leave it to County Recorder Frances Deane to win the prize for Most Brazen Use of St. Patrick's Day for Self-Promotion in the Face of the Very Real Possibility that She Will Lose Her Job Due to Ethics Violations.
Might not have been so bad, if only she hadn't put this slogan on the side of the car: "Frances Deane: Doing The Right Thing."
On a day celebrating the holy man who, some believe, drove the snakes from Ireland, we couldn't help thinking about those snakes as Deane's car puttered down the street.
"Doing The Right Thing."
Then I looked at my throng, saw the good, honest character of people not yet bought and sold, and wondered if perhaps I was wrong. Maybe we were just tired from the extended cheering at seeing one of the original Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, in a vehicle minutes earlier? No, REALLY—a live Munchkin. (Next year, we're praying for a flying monkey.)
A more likely explanation is that no one even noticed Deane. By this time in the parade, the drone of political "floats"—oh, how my kid squealed at the waving, walking business suits and their candy-tossing minions or, and this was exciting, as they handed out bags that some might consider empty but for the exciting fact that they were embossed with the name of the candidate!—led to the unconscious urge to look away from the horror and use the parade as a gathering spot to talk about more interesting topics like fly swatters or the ancient art of watching water boil.
Or maybe it was simply that people were doing ciphering in their heads: How many estate ethics violations was Deane going to face at her upcoming April 14 hearing?
The answer is seven. If just three allegations are upheld, Deane could lose her job.
So maybe that's what the silence was for.
Thinking about the possibility of a scalding sterilization of at least one tiny, largely inconsequential office in county government.
That, and flying monkeys.