Another Day in the Country: Floating folderol
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
The house is a mess this morning! There's straw all over the floor in the bathroom, discarded costumes in the living room and cold pizza on the kitchen counter. The office is a mess, too! While a leftover, slightly disheveled scarecrow sits on the bench outside the door, there's fall foliage, sunflowers, and miscellaneous vines threatening to take over the walking space and boxes of "we may need these" advancing on my desk. All this is the usual aftermath of float-making folderol.
As we waited to find our place in the Burdick Labor Day parade, someone rode by on his horse and said, "Who made this float? It looks professional!" The reason he asked was that the California Sisters and Tooltime Tim were rather incognito. We were dressed up like scarecrows with pumpkin faces and straw stuffing sticking out every possible crack. All we could really do was wave from our ragged perch on the trailer where these particular scarecrows were hoeing in the garden. We called it The Scarecrow Family Hoe-down in honor of their theme "Show Your Family Pride," and we even got Mom to let us paint her face, put her in an old costume and perch her in the front seat of the truck to wave out the window.
"Did you have fun?" we asked her when it was all over — she'd been a little skeptical but decided it was better than sitting at home alone.
"It was fun — I just didn't know what to expect." Of course, we had fun! That's the purpose of floats and parades, isn't it?
Earlier Monday morning Tooltime Tim said, "I've got the trailer and the hay. Is anyone going to show me what you had in mind?" This man is something else!
"I painted these huge carrots and radishes," I began. "I need framework to hold them up in the air."
He grabbed scraps of lumber and started hammering. I've been creating floats for more than 30 years and the secret is to use what you've got! On the Fourth of July Tim cut off the front half of a dilapidated little shack we had in the back yard of Cousin's Corner and it became the "little grass shack in Hawaii." Now that same shack was "Home Sweet Home" for a bunch of scarecrows.
It used to be our family tradition to take a float to the Napa County annual parade in California. We discovered the comedy section and found that we had a better chance of winning in that category with fewer entries and year after year we brought home enough money to fund our fair-going for the day.
One year we perched an old out-house on the back of the float where an occupant, pants down around the boots, sat reading the paper. It stole the show and we never told who the pot-sitter was either, since you couldn't see the face and would have had to have known those knees pretty well to identify them.
Another year we turned the float into an old-fashioned bedroom with a passel of giggly girls getting dressed with corsets and hoops and silk stockings complete with a little brother hiding under the bed to watch. It was fun! And then our teenagers grew up and were more interested in boyfriends than floats.
When we came to Ramona the floating frenzy started all over again. We discovered Tim to be the perfect partner in crime and some years we've made as many as five floats in one day. I do believe my favorite float was the Drive In Theater we made complete with little "box speakers" (Tim insisted on) for each cardboard car made out of old washing machine cartons from Gambles. We helped the neighborhood kids make the cars and they slicked back their hair and proudly rode in their autos munching popcorn. It was great! Of course there had to be a John Wayne movie playing in the background and a silhouette of John and some floozy on the big screen!
This year we had so many floats in the Ramona Fourth of July Parade that these three musketeers didn't even win a prize. We thought that was great for a change! And since we'd appealed far and wide for folks to join our parade in Ramona, we ought to reciprocate.
It's another day in the country and that mess hasn't cleaned itself up. Next week, it's off to Hope and then it's Lincolnville's Octoberfest! On second thought, maybe I won't clear it all away until all this float folderol is over!
