Another Parade

It's almost more fun than we can handle: back-to-back weekends of parades.

(Whenever I think of parades, I recall a memo I received when I worked at NAPA announcing the "grand martial" for a NASCAR race).

This week it was the Strawberry Festival in Dayton, TN. Once famous for being home to the Scopes Trial, today it is known for having one of the longest parades ever (partially due to the huge gaps between floats). They've got it all.

Of course there was the whole fleet of emergency vehicles from any little community and hamlet within 30 miles. Then there were politicians, both local and state. There were the pageant kings and queens, tots to teens.

(Matthew won Little Mister Super Pooper after a bout with some gastrointestinal bug).

There were riders on farm equipment and horses (who thankfully waited until they were 30 yards away before relieving themselves). A cash advance store's float stopped right in front of us and the employees proceeded to empty their stock of koosies at our feet (I assured the boys that we didn't need any but we somehow came home with 4. Maybe I should host a contest....).

Women of a certain age in ostentatious attire strutted their stuff while blasting obnoxious music. Overweight aged men stuffed themselves into small cars to drive wildly in figure 8 patterns while honking their horns. (Is this what automatically happens to you once you hit 50?)

There were boy scouts and ball teams. In a previous year they practiced pitching by throwing out frozen tube popsicles; they have good aim. This year they settled for water guns and squirters.

There were cheerleaders and twirlers. There were floats promoting pro wrestling and a spay/neuter clinic.

There were random unmarked cars which must have paid an entrance fee for the glory of riding down Main Street. And last, but certainly not least, were the motorized coolers. I saw a couple of kids on these at the Red Bank Jubilee last week, but this week there was a whole gang of adults astride these contraptions.

My favorite thing about this parade, though, is that a majority of the floats throw out those wonderful strawberry candies with the oozy filling. I don't know if was the economic downturn or the fact that we were positioned at the end of the route, but we only got one. I called dibs on it but Stephen stole it from me.

I even tried trading a box of Nerds, but no go. He ate it (although he did offer me a lick) and didn't feel a bit of remorse.