Healdsburg marks St. Patrick's Day with annual parade

Hundreds of people trimmed in bright green flocked to downtown Healdsburg before dawn Tuesday for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which starts with whiskey in your coffee and a bagpiper and ends with a hushed crowd and a sweet rendition of “Danny Boy.”

The parade participants - everyone participates - began gathering at about 6 a.m., spread between a few downtown bars and a car lot. When the parade began at 7 a.m., they all joined forces in the middle of the street for the short, brisk walk to Healdsburg’s iconic square, around and back.

Healdsburg resident and regular attendee Karen Bower called it a “green Halloween,” referring to the amazing getups donned by humans and their dogs.

“I wanted to join the foolishness. I’m soaking this up,” said Michael Sprague of Santa Rosa, who stopped for the parade on his way to work in Geyserville.

Wearing a green sash that said “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” Sprague enjoyed watching the crowd grow as he took in the upbeat fun at such an early hour. There wasn’t always time for such frivolity when the kids were small and life was busier, he noted. Now, he said, “This is the kind of thing we should be doing.”

It was a common attitude.

“Everybody is willing to be loony at 6 o’clock, 7 o’clock in the morning. It’s just great,” said David Martin of Healdsburg, who felt he was due to head to a bar for his coffee and “medicine.”

Healdsburg residents Laura Seccombe and David Nelson had gotten their Irish coffees prior to the parade and enjoyed the march with their three black Scottish terriers, decked out in green neck scarves.

“They’re Irish for the day,” Seccombe said.

The Tubbs family from Santa Rosa never misses the parade and returned this year with their young boys, Patrick, 2, and Henry, 4, who rode in their side-by-side stroller wearing tiny green hats and other green garments. Carey and Aaron Tubbs named their son Patrick for the day’s saint, and Carey Tubbs noted she was born on March 17.

The parents solidify their commitment to St. Patrick’s Day by taking the week off from work and kicking off a multiday celebration with Healdsburg’s parade.

“I love the down-home feel,” Carey Tubbs said. “Everyone is so festive and in a good mood and ready to whoop it up.”

This was perhaps the 18th such parade, which began as a casual idea and a handful of people from the B&B Lounge. Until last year the parade also started from the downtown bar, but last year the bar had to move from its spot downtown to new digs north of town. It still participates in the festivities with a corned beef and cabbage meal later in the day.

On Tuesday at about 7:20 a.m., when the green hordes had marched around the square and made sure to issue rousing “Good Morning” shouts to people who presumably were sleeping in their nearby boutique hotel rooms, it was time for John Ballachey of Healdsburg to sing the familiar Irish tune “Danny Boy.”

The grateful crowd cheered him on, and another Healdsburg St. Patrick’s Day parade was done.

“Now let’s go get a drink,” someone yelled from the crowd.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com or Twitter@rossmannreport.