BANGOR – Wearing the green military helmet liner he has had for half of his young life, 10-year-old Joey Martin held an American flag in one hand Monday and watched intently as the parade passed by.

Standing beside his father, the Carmel Elementary School pupil was watching the annual Fourth of July parade for all it had to offer: the music, the sirens, the brightly colored clowns that leave behind smiles as they pass.

He was watching for another reason as well:

“To show respect to all our veterans because our veterans kept our freedom by protecting us,” said the Carmel youth, whose father, Don Martin, 45, of Bangor, served in the military as did both of the boy’s grandfathers, one of them in World War II.

Don Martin said his son quickly developed an appreciation for the military, asking five or six years ago that his dad buy him the hard fiberglass helmet liner they had seen in an Army supply store. Still, the father is concerned that for many the idea of the parade can be overshadowed by all the flash and commercialism.

“They know it’s a parade, but they don’t make the connection,” Martin said.

That connection was made by at least some of the thousands of people who lined the roads to watch the parade. From the Acme Road in Brewer, across the Penobscot River and through Bangor’s downtown, applause erupted as veterans passed.

“I think that there’s a renewed honor of our veterans,” Terry Bourassa said as she sat with her husband, John, in the shade of a tree on Wilson Street, near where the parade started. Although parades elsewhere have been a regular part of their lives, Monday’s was their first in the area. They moved to Glenburn last fall.

Both came from families where July Fourth was considered an important day to remember, they said. Terry Bourassa, 58, recalled growing up in Lewiston and going to parades where kids were given bottles of milk instead of candy.

John Bourassa, 62, said he would like to see more high school bands, but he did appreciate that his fellow veterans were getting the respect that many like him, veterans of the Vietnam War, didn’t get when they returned.

It’s still difficult to talk about it, Bourassa said, having returned stateside in December 1967 wanting to forget his experience in Vietnam and hoping others here wouldn’t find out.

“It’s still a painful memory,” he said, but parades like the one Monday seem to help soften those memories.

The veterans who marched were interspersed among the parade’s many offerings, a mixture of music, dance and entertainment.

John Barron, a Bangor resident, defended the inclusion of all kinds of parade participants. His 1931 Ford Model A Deluxe Coupe offered a glimpse of the past with the “AOOGA” sound of the horn. He said such parades show an appreciation for what life has to offer and a chance to remember.

“Parades are about what’s going on now and what went on in the past,” Barron said.

A flatbed truck served as the stage for the Twin City Cloggers, tapping and turning with synchronized flag waving to the song “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” World War II trucks rattled past. A WWII Jeep hauled a trailer with a bell on it that clanged as bells did in 1945 when they celebrated the end of the war.

The Anah Temple Shrine Band performed up-tempo songs such as the Maine Stein Song and patriotic ones such as “God Bless America.”

Girls from the Halifax Sparklettes from Nova Scotia flung batons into the sunny sky, spun and caught them coming down. Antique and classic cars rolled past. A Maine Air National Guard KC-135 roared overhead. Sirens wailed.

The lawn-tractor-sized version of the huge fire engines used by the Air National Guard at Bangor International Airport, long absent from parades, grabbed people’s attention.

The loud thud of muskets caught some off guard in Brewer as members of McCobb’s Company, Revolutionary War re-enactors, marched in period gear, including their tricorns – three-cornered hats.

For Bill Siebert, 62, of Dixmont, re-enactors offer something you can’t get in a textbook: the chance to get a sense of what July Fourth is really about.

“You can read in a book all day long, but until you see the musket, until you see the clothing or experience just a little bit what our forefathers went through, you have no idea about the hardships and sufferings they encountered,” he said.