AS FAR AS I KNOW, the Froggy Carr New Years Brigade is the only group in the Mummers Parade with its own police escort. That's escort, not honor guard. In fact, this was the first year that the four helmeted Highway Patrol officers on motorcycles that are assigned to make sure the Frogs arrive at City Hall more or less on time rode behind the wench brigade rather than in front. That way the brigade couldn't take a sudden left behind the cops and leave the police playing catch-the-Frogs.

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AMERICA STARTS HERE Second Street in South Philadelphia is as good a place as any for America to start a new year. The Mummers Parade is so quintessentially American, both awesome and ridiculous, a cold weather Mardi Gras born in South Philadelphia and, more than a century later, still proudly marching up Broad Street to be judged by the swells in Center City. But the core of the Mummers experience is neighborhood. This photo is what the neighborhood on South Second Street looked like on Mummers morning 2007.

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IN YESTERDAYS COLUMN about Bobby Clarke, which will appear tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 27) on the Inquirer's op-ed page, I ended with the words "it made me believe I saw evidence of that missing angel in every happy, scarred and painted face I saw." This is what I was talking about. That's Bobby Clarke on the left, smiling at the reception he received from members of the James "Froggy" Carr comic brigade of the mummers parade when Clarke walked into Dirty Frank's bar on New Year's Day 2005.

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