This Sunday afternoon is the annual Central City Christmas Parade. I can't remember which one it is but I've probably attended most of them.
I had the pleasure for about twenty something years of being either the Chairman or Co-Chairman of it, even back when it used to begin at the First Baptist Church. Of course for the last several years (probably about twenty), it begins on South Second street by the former Kentucky Fried Chicken (now Ski-Daddy's restaurant). It always amazes me how the thing manages to come off as smoothly as it does. I've always called it "organized chaos!"
It's when two hundred entries all show up within a fifteen minute period of each other, all wanting to know where their position is in the parade.
When we started up by First Baptist, this was simple. Here's how it worked. I would obtain a clipboard with a piece of paper on it. The paper usually didn't have anything to do with the parade, in fact, it could be a grocery list. The important thing was to have the clipboard in hand and look like somebody who knew what they were doing. There was a manhole cover right in the middle of the intersection between First Baptist and Tucker Funeral Home. Take clipboard in hand and stand on that manhole cover. When someone came to you and wanted to know their position in the parade, you would ask them if they were "motorized" or if they were "walking?" If they said they were pulling a float, I would look at the grocery list and then tell them to head down Third Street until they saw the back of the line and simply fall in behind the last entry they saw. We'd be calling for them in due time. If, on the other hand, they said they were "marching," I would again look at the grocery list on my clipboard, point up Morehead Street towards the grade school and tell them to head up there until they found the back of the line. Fall in the back and we'd call for them in due time. We'd line all the fire trucks up by First Christian Church (which took up that entire block) and when it came time to begin the parade, an assistant would go up there and signal for them to start. Once they began moving, I'd stand on the manhole cover and "blend" the rest of the parade. If I had 1/3 marching units and 2/3 motorized units, I'd simply send out two motorized units and 1 marching unit (a marching unit was usually a band or scout troop while a motorized unit was a float or car). It always worked out smoothly and people thought we spent weeks lining up the parade entrants.
We had several dates and times with our parade until we finally settled on the Sunday Afternoon before Thanksgiving as a regular date. For years (before I was one of the chairmen), it was usually on Saturday mornings. Then in later years, it was changed to Friday evenings and finally the Sunday afternoon dates. The idea to change the route to what it is today was Bill Alward's. We were co-chairmen and were active in the Shriners (naturals at having parades...even if there's no occasion). We decided that more people would be able to attend it on a Sunday afternoon since most people were off work, most people went to church on Sunday morning and went out to eat lunch after Church. 2:00 O'clock Sunday seemed like a perfect time and apparently it was because the crowds were always larger since doing that. It also gave them some room to "spread out" since everyone wasn't squeezed into a three block area.
There was only two problems with moving it out there. First, the line-up area was more confusing and required more assistants to help line units up.
Also, because there were multiple streets back in there, we couldn't just tell "marchers" or "motorized units" to simply go to the end of the line. We actually had to line them up somewhere. It was a bit of a nuisance but not a big problem. The second problem was our infamous "viaduct" on Second Street. Since it was only 11' 4" tall, that limited the height of floats and for those who brought "out of town" floats, they had no advance warning. This was solved in one of two ways. They could either (1) remove anything above 11' prior to entering the viaduct and replace it on the other side or (2) park their unit on the north side of the viaduct and let the first 2,000 people miss it. Most opted for option #1.
Those of you who participated in the parade in the early days (Saturday Mornings) will remember it as being sort of a "war zone." This is true especially of those who marched with one of the seven or eight bands and likewise Junior bands we had before school consolidation. If you remember, we didn't have modern stand alone stores like Wal-Mart or even Dollar General stores. We had the two "five and dime" stores downtown, J. J. Newberry's and Ben Franklin. Both of these sold an item called a "pea shooter." You remember them. They were nothing more than a glorified soda straw and a package of peas about 1/4" in diameter. You would simply stick a pea (or several peas) in your mouth, put the straw up to your lips and blow like heck. Fortunately, I don't know of anyone getting their "eye put out" (as my mother liked to say) but I'll guarantee you it created a lot of "whelps!" My old buddy, David Greenwood played the tuba and I remember his horn always looked like it had been in a hailstorm, having several hundred "dents" from the pea shooters.
We had a guy in the sixties who we talked into playing Santa Claus for the parade. Since we didn't have the time or resources that particular year to build him a float, we borrowed one of Kentucky Utilities' bucket trucks (also called "cherry pickers") and placed him atop it in a "bucket." By the time he got to the end of the parade route his face looked like "Rocky" Balboa after the fourth round. He never played Santa for us again and we picked peas out of the beard for weeks. Fortunately, after a few years of this, the two stores pulled the pea shooters off of their shelves a couple of weeks before the parade.
After we moved to the newer parade route, we began inviting local and regional celebrities to be the grand marshall each year. We had a few nationally famous people lead our parade but by far the most popular we ever had was the late Marcia Yockey, the "crazed" weather lady from Evansville. We advertised her pretty heavily and even to this day she drew the largest crowd I've ever seen downtown. Estimates were as high as 15,000 people attended that year. That was three times the population of the entire city. She paraded in a '57 Olds convertible at the head of the parade, returned to the start and we sent her back through again. She received applause from admirers along the parade route both times. When the parade ended she returned to the beginning point (where she parked her personal vehicle, a 1968 "Whale Tale" Porsche). She stayed around in the cold weather for another two hours mingling with the crown allowing them to take pictures with her and signing autographs. She was loved by everyone and she loved the attention.
We began billing the parade as "Kentucky's largest small town Christmas Parade," a moniker we still use. This was also Bill Alward's creation and the fact was that it was a pretty accurate statement as our little parade was larger (in unit count) than both Owensboro and Evansville. We had lots of Shriners precision units, clowns, usually 10-12 floats, as many as 12-14 marching bands and all kinds of beauty contest winners.
Until I worked at most of these parades, I didn't realize how many beauty contests there were in our county. We had everything from Miss Muhlenberg County to Tiny Mr. And Miss Muhlenberg County, Little Miss and Mr. Muhlenberg County, Little Miss Graham Firefighter and on and on and on. The mothers of these kids were pretty demanding too. Little Miss Drakesboro wanted to ride directly behind the Drakesboro Cheerleaders and just in front of the Drakesboro Senior Marching Band. No problem, but so did Tiny Miss Drakesboro Firefighter and Drakesboro Jr. Prom Queen. My wife alway stayed on my case when I'd come home and tell her that next year I was going to lease a dump tractor-trailer from someone and place a sign on the side that said "Tiny Mr. and Miss EVERYTHING!" I would then tell these demanding stage mothers that when the tractor trailer got to the end of the parade route, it would pull up to just in front of the RC Plant and raise the dump bed and all mothers were requested to catch their little darling as the slid down the floor of the dump bed. Of course, back then I was young and single and didn't see the value of these small children. Now that I've had my own and especially our "sweet little granddaughters," I'd never think of such a thing. In fact, Sunday, our car club, the Topless Cruisers are driving our convertibles in the parade and one of our granddaughters will be riding high with us waving at the crowd. She'll be the prettiest girl in the whole parade and her only title will be "Tiny Miss Papaw's Girl!"
For years, the Central City Jaycees co-sponsored the parade with the Chamber of Commerce. That meant that the Chamber put up the money and the Jaycees put up the manpower. The Jaycees also liked to enter a float each year and we'd spend weeks building it. We didn't like simple floats with live people on them...we liked complex floats that were animated and we liked them self propelled. This usually involved some sophisticated system for the driver like a periscope. I remember one year we decided to build a paper mache Santa in a sled on a trailer and the reindeer that pulled it (also paper mache) were built atop a Jeep we borrowed. Both the jeep and the trailer were hidden beneath a mountain of chicken wire and white table napkins.
The driver (and co-driver) were under this mountain of napkins and used a home made periscope to see how to drive. Jack Davis was elected to be the driver and because the float was so long, rather than line it up on Third Street, we decided to park it on Broad Street and would blend it in up by First Christian Church. The jeep was an old military jeep and we never realized how much oil it burned which created a lot of exhaust fumes and smoke under all of those napkins. I was Jack's co-pilot and sat in the passenger seat. For safety, we had portable walkie-talkies and had an escort walk along the side just in front of it to keep people from getting accidentally run over. The periscope offered limited visibility to say the least. When it came time for us to mix in with the rest of the parade, they signaled us to start. Jack cranked up the old jeep (which had no muffler by the way) and when he let out on the clutch, the periscope fell off in his lap. We had no way to see where we were going. No problem. The advance guy simply got on the radio and told us to turn left or turn right and he would guide us through the seemingly straight stretch through downtown. Only thing was, he had to walk backwards to see us and he would get mixed up on which way we should turn. It made for some "pretty close calls." We made it, however and won first place for our float. By the time we got to the lower end of town, the napkins had already turned gray from the burnt oil coming from the jeep and Jack and I were so high from the fumes we couldn't hardly walk.
The next year we decided to build a giant snowman self-propelled float on a riding lawn tractor. This float was built with a metal frame and had animated things such as flashing eyes, a head that turned and an arm that waved at the crowd. There were two people inside to drive it and operate the animation.
The first guy (Glenn Adkins) rode on the hood of the tractor with his hands behind him on the steering wheel as he looked through a peep hole located in one to the buttons on the snowman's chest. The second person (me), operated the turning of the head and the waving of it's hand. It was pretty ingenious and even won first place in both the Owensboro and Evansville Christmas parades. Anyway, we needed to decide how tall it needed to be and still clear the various telephone wires and stoplights on the parade route. To accomplish this, we drove downtown and determined that the sagging telephone wires were the lowest points along the route. We measured them and found them to be fourteen feet above the pavement. We went back to the garage where we were building the float and just to be sure, we measured 4' from the floor and drew a chalk line on the back of the cab of my pickup truck. We then borrowed a 10' section of conduit we were using to construct the float and when you held it on the line drawn on the pickup, it made the total of 14'.
We then put a couple of guys in the bed of the truck and drove the entire parade route holding the conduit at it's prescribed height to insure we'd have clearance throughout the entire route. At the time I was a teller at First National Bank. The next morning after we did this, Police Chief Jim Bob Wilson came into the bank to cash a check. I made small talk and asked him how things were going. He replied, " I'm worn out...I've been out all night looking for some pranksters seen out last night driving around town trying to punch out the stoplights with a pole!" I never told him any different.
Sunday, we'll go to Church, eat lunch and head out for the parade. I'll spend a lot of Saturday shining up our convertible for the ten minute trek through town, being a kid once again. We'll see lots of neighbors and friends and it'll be festive. It's supposed to be about fifty degrees and sunny. Perfect weather for a parade. There'll probably be only two bands in the parade. There'll probably only be a few "Tiny Mr. and Misses" (the beauty pageant fad has faded somewhat over the years) and the Job Corps drill team will perform. St. Nick will be there and hopefully he won't have to dodge any peas. It'll be fun and it'll create a memory for my Granddaughter. Maybe she'll write about it in a blog someday.
No comments:
Post a Comment