By Georgina Brennan

Imagine a St. Patrick’s parade. Images of hundreds of marchers, costumes, music and applauding audiences come to mind.

Except, that is, in Enterprise, Alabama, where this year the world’s smallest St. Patrick’s Day parade will take place. It is a parade of one.

Each year on St. Patrick’s Day since 1993 a different person of Irish descent gets the honor of holding the Irish flag high above their head, while they carry a pot o’ gold and recite limericks walking past the local courthouse and around the Bol Weevil Monument.

Enterprise, famous for being the only American city with a monument of a pest, selects the parade grand marshal on the basis of their written acceptance speech.

The streets of the Alabama town are packed for the parade, which starts at noon and ends, well, shortly after. The parade route is only a few hundred yards.

Americans first celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in 1724 with the launch of Boston’s Irish Charitable Society, in honor of the Feast Day of Ireland’s National Apostle. The first parade was in New York City in 1762.

New Yorkers later adopted Patrick as the patron saint of their city which inspired their fellow Americans to invent several Irish customs, including eating corn beef and cabbage for dinner and drinking green. It was actually a full two centuries later when the Irish started having parades.

There are now an estimated 500 North American cities hosting parades, parties and weeklong celebrations of Irish culture.

In Emerald Isle, North Carolina, a town of 3,528 residents, one in six are of Irish descent. Everyone there turns out for the parade on St. Patrick’s Day.

The longest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world takes place in New York, with a route that attracts over 1.5 million viewers and stretches over four miles.

With 150,000 marchers Manhattan’s parade is also the largest, while the shortest one takes place in Dripsey, Co. Cork, Ireland, which is a mere 20 yards long — simply a parade between two pubs.

The shortest parade in North America is in Maryville, Missouri. This annual parade features floats and marchers who cavort in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day for less than one-half block. The route, less than 100 feet, is shortened each year as necessary in order to protect the record of shortest parade.