Or so it seemed.

This wasn’t exactly the intersection of Broadway and West 35th Street in the heart of New York City. Instead of high-rise buildings in Manhattan, Yoder and dozens of other students in the West Johnston High School Marching Band marched last week onto a parking lot between the backside of their school and several mobile classrooms.

But at least one thing present last Tuesday matched what the students will see in November as they march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Thanks to a handful of band parents, the parking lot has been adorned temporarily with a replica of the Macy’s parade logo that will mark the Herald Square stage.

John Pickens, whose daughter is part of the marching band’s color guard, said it took parents about 18 hours to duplicate the design, which measures 190 feet long by 42 feet wide. Pickens said the team of painters used 34 gallons of paint — teal, red, yellow and black.

The painters did embellish their design by incorporating “WJHS 2008” into the logo. “That won’t be there in New York,” Lance Britt, director of West High’s marching band, told students. (His comment drew more than a few quick laughs.)

Britt said the band parents agreed to duplicate the Macy’s parade design to help the band prepare for its nationally televised debut on Nov. 29. As he gazed at the logo, Yoder, the band student, said he and his classmates were suddenly realizing what their invitation to this year’s parade would mean for them and their school.

“It’s starting to become a reality,” Yoder said. “I’m starting to see how all of our really hard work is starting to pay off.”

“It’s going to be incredible to be able to represent not just our county but our state before the whole country,” he added.

West Johnston’s band will be the first from North Carolina to perform in the nationally televised event in more than a decade. East Carteret High School last had the honor in 1995.

Britt, the band director, said the upcoming trip to New York City took on new meaning a few weeks ago when he and the directors of the four other bands performing in the 2008 parade met with executives at Macy’s and NBC. He and the other band directors talked about the concepts for their parade performances and showed videotapes of their shows.

Exactly what those tapes showed will remain a secret until the show gets under way. Britt said Macy’s placed the bands under orders to keep quiet about the concepts for their shows until the day the groups take the stage.

That’s just as well for Britt and his students. In the remaining months before their big day, the band still has much work to do if it hopes to raise the $150,000 needed to fund the trip.

As of last week, Britt said, the band had raised only about one-third of that sum. But students, staff and parents are stepping up their game. In addition to soliciting the business community for donations, Britt said, band parents are selling cookbooks, and the band is raffling off a Nintendo Wii and other prizes.

“We’re starting to see a lot of movement,” Britt said. “It’s going to be a busy fall for us.”

The school might face an uphill battle, but students like Nick Hunter, the band’s senior drum major, were undeterred. “We’re ready to show that we’re not just some little band from North Carolina,” he said. “We’re making our mark on the world, showing them what we can do.”