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Emma Hoats and Sydney Kearney watch the 2014 St Patrick’s Day Parade in Wilkes-Barre.

Local farmer Larry O’Malia uses a float to pull a tractor in last year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in downtown Wilkes-Barre.

The Avalon String Band from Philadelphia brought colorful costumes and mummer’s music to last year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Wilkes-Barre.

WILKES-BARRE — Bagpipes will drone, dancers will skip about and mummer string bands will strut their Philadelphia-style finery through the streets of downtown Wilkes-Barre on Sunday, March 15.

And as thousands of spectators gather for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, you’re sure to see the color of spring turn up in all sorts of places — shining in someone’s hair or dangling around a neck or, in the case of leprechauns, gleaming from their bowler hats.

“We’ll have beads and (eye) glasses shaped like shamrocks and T-shirts and maybe wands for little kids to wave,” Ann Marie Bossard said, listing Parade Day items she expects to offer for sale at the Anthracite News Stand on Wilkes-Barre’s Public Square.

“I don’t get to see much of the actual parade,” Mark Bronsburg of Mimmo’s Pizza said, explaining he and his wife and three children expect to be busy selling such items as spinach pizza and broccoli pizza — both boasting green ingredients — and perhaps even an “apple-pie pizza” that would be embellished with mint leaves.

Wilkes-Barre’s neighbor to the North, Scranton, will hold its annual parade on Saturday, March 14. Organizers of that well-established event proudly describe it as the fourth largest in the nation based on population. It starts at 11:45 a.m. on Wyoming Avenue, and includes everybody from pipe bands and beauty queens to soccer players and Scout troops.

Wilkes-Barre’s parade, set to begin at 2 p.m. Sunday at the corner of South and South Main streets, is admittedly smaller, as in having fewer marchers and a shorter route. But organizers concentrate on making it a family-friendly celebration, a fact underscored by the other events planned for the day.

The 4th annual Renal Race, a 3K race which raises money for the fight against kidney cancer, begins at 10 a.m. Sunday at Genetti’s Best Western, 77 E. Market St., in downtown Wilkes-Barre.

At 11:30 a.m. children are welcome to gather at Barnes & Noble on South Main Street for story time.

Then at 1 p.m. the Hooley Boys will bring their Celtic tunes to Public Square for a free, pre-parade concert.