It was freezing cold (nippley!) and I had on so many clothes I could barely move. While we were waiting for the parade to start I decided it was too cold to sketch. There was no way I was going to remove my gloves.
Then the big bicycle came by....
Yep, those tires were about 10 feet tall. It was tooooo cool. Then there was Elvis, complete with spangly white jumpsuit singing "Blue Christmas", a teeny tiny beauty queen with a crown bigger than she was, and a float with a huge yellow sun that I didn't understand.
Michael Jackson lives! He was moonwalking down Main Street tonight. Even had on his signature glove. There were about six marching bands and I spied the tiniest girl playing a big ol' tuba. She had on the coolest deep purple beret. Want, want, want. Lots and lots of little bitty kids on floats wearing Santa hats. I saw two little cuties in a little red wagon with Christmas lights being pulled by their momma.
There was a group of dancing packages (wearing Santa hats), Mr. Tacohead (wearing a big Santa hat), and a Christmas blood drop (wearing a springy Santa hat). I would have liked to have been in the meeting where it was decided that this year's parade entry would be an enormous blood drop. Hummm....what were they thinking???
And no Christmas parade would be complete without at least one white-tailed deer and an outhouse. Heaven forbid we leave out the outhouse. The cackle factor of having an outhouse in the parade made the cold all worthwhile.
There were a bunch of cool antique fire trucks. They may have been the current working fire trucks for some of the rural volunteer fire departments. One of these little fire departments had a hook and ladder truck.
Mr. Hotdog turned to me and asked, "Why would they need a hook and ladder truck? There aren't any two-story structures out there."
"To get cats out of trees," says I.
Then there was a fleet of old Willis Jeeps. I drew one special for Capt. Elaine.
Then came the Budweiser Clydesdales. MAGNIFICENT! They are why I wanted to brave the cold and crowds and see this parade. Ohhhhh...I loves me some Clydesdales. The dalmatian on the beer wagon was wrapped up tight in a blanket against the cold. He sat very still and didn't try to wiggle out. He knew he had a good thing going. Good dog!
And those were the highlights of the parade, drawn in the dark as it was going by at 3-4 MPH. Lasted about an hour, took about that long to get out of the parking lot when it was over.
A good time was had by all.
1 comment:
Great post. Great parade. I think the small towns take their parades as a community event where the larger towns take them for granted. Wilma and I lived in a town of 14,000 for a few years and loved the parades.
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