I went to the McCleary Bear Festival about a month ago. It’s a lovely, small town kind of festival and it’s always fun to go to these, largely because it’s easy to be a big fish in a small pond.
The Janmeister and I met up with some fellow rogues and headed over to the assembly area for the parade. It was there that I had my first real flashback since I’ve been back in the Northwest. As I looked across the field of gathered floats, I noticed someone who was very familiar – Jud Turner.
Jud is with Fathoms O’ Fun, Port Orchard’s annual festival. And seeing him, I went right back to those days as a volunteer-crazed member of the community. I even took Jud’s place. Just once. And it was more than enough to cure me of volunteeritis.
The occasion was the Portland Starlight Parade. Admittedly, I was swept away with the glamor of it all. I would have preferred Key West or New Orleans, but hey, even Portland was enough to at least temporarily satiate my wonderlust.
We should have known doom was before us as we prepared to leave town. Rain poured incessantly as we prepared to hitch the float’s main body to the old U-Haul truck that was then the official Fathoms float transporter.
The rain stopped just outside of Centralia. Brighter skies were on the horizon. We were making good time. And then suddenly, ka-chunk, ka-chunk — the truck began to die. My heart raced for a moment, before I realized that the right fuel tank had run dry. I reached down beneath the seat and flipped the switch. Another frightening series of gurgles and chugs. Then, the truck lurched forward as more fuel surged through the system. I relaxed once again.
More miles ticked by. And then I noticed something wrong with the gauges. The temperature was redlined. Even to someone as mechanically challenged as I, this was obviously a problem.
We pulled off at the next rest stop. As I pulled to a stop, steam poured from the radiator. Green truck puss poured from beneath the truck. This was not a good sign. Thankfully, a mechanic who was vacationing from the Midwest but was moving to Bremerton in the fall fall was parked a spot or two away. Talk about luck. He rallied to our rescue, removing one very useless thermostat and pasting the whole cooling system back together with a bolt from the bumper, some mechanical magic and water from the bathroom.
As we pulled into Portland, we started hunting for the parade. There was no such thing as GPS or even a smartphone with Google Maps. No one had bothered to tell us where the parade started, which exit to take, where to line up, where the truck was to be parked during the parade or where our hotel was.
By the grace of God we found the start of the parade, after a very ill-advised wrong turn up the wrong way of a one-way road in a 25 foot long truck towing another 20 feet of tarp-covered parade float.
The more wealthy communities have floats that fit in the back of semis or on trailers. They simply have to back their float down the ramp, throw on a little futz and be on their way. But the Fathoms float was an Erector set, only there are no directions. It comes in 30 pieces, including two large sponsons, a two-piece nose and numerous decorations.
I’d never been through the entire assembly process, but others had. But of course, nothing can be that easy for Volunteer-o-holics like us. We had less than an hour to not only assemble the float, but add hundreds of lights as well.
You see, Starlight is a night parade. And they require that the entire float be illuminated. We were well prepared with hundreds of twinkle lights and five floods. At least we thought we had five floods. As we emptied the entire truck, it dawned on us that the floods were now 250 miles away, back in the float barn. In our rush to beat the elements, we had forgotten them.
No matter, we thought. We had lots of lights. So we moved forward, stapling down strands of twinkle lights, dodging the occasionally shower, looking tentatively at our watches and wondering how we would ever make it by the time the judges showed up.
And then there was the festival truck issue. We had no idea where the parade ended, nor where we supposed to park the truck. So back onto the streets of Portland we went, near-missing parked cars, navigating down perilously narrow roads and power shifting our way up and down hill and dale. Thankfully, after asking several pedestrians and two policemen, we finally found a place to park the truck.
Just one problem. We didn’t know how to get from where we were to where we had to be. The maze-like trip through town had so completely disoriented us that we didn’t know where the float was. We gave up hope of finding the parade. We found drinks. We found pizza. We finally stumbled onto a street with spectators and asked them which way the parade ran. They pointed one way, we went the other.
Now we were clicking. We had food, we had the float, the royalty showed up, the generator was cranking out power to light the lights — life was good. All we had to do now was await our turn in the parade.
And then it began to rain. Rain isn’t really the right word. Torrentials is good. A deluge more accurate. The Great Flood, right on the dot. Noah couldn’t have weathered this storm. The drops hurt when they hit. And the float I was now sitting in was filling with water. With the generator pumping out 1500 watts of power and me in a pool of water, I was sure that I was going to end up being the light show in the parade as I popped, crackled and sizzled from a faulty connection.
I wanted to turn off the route and go home, but the only way back to the truck was through the parade route. It was dark, it was wet, it was cold. After what seemed like and eternity, they finally moved us out, down the Parade Route from Hell.
The same float with a new shell. This one I designed. But underneath the same Chevy Luv Erector Set.
And then another problem arose. You see, the underlying piece of machinery on the float is an old Chevy LUV pickup. And with all things that are free, you don’t always get what you want. Now one would think that the best choice for a parade vehicle would be an automatic. A parade is not a fluid affair — it’s a constant stream of starts and stops.
The pickup, though, was a stick. And the first time I let the clutch out, I almost dumped all the royalty. I shimmied and shook down the block, braving the painful pelting of a tropical storm, trying to keep the float centered on the road, and not losing a princess or queen in the process.
It was miserable. Stop and go. Uphill, downhill. Turn right, turn left. Speed up, slow down. Hardly anybody stayed to watch. The crowd went home. Finally, we made it to the end. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. Figures! We pulled in behind the truck. The royalty left in their cushy van to do what ever royalty does after a parade. And we were left behind to do all the dirty work.
All we could think of was the hotel.
The hotel. We never did find out where it was either. All I knew was the name – Holiday Inn Express. So we called every Holiday Inn in the phone book. “It’s on Burnside,” the desk clerk finally says. “Just drive down Burnside and you’ll see us on the right, just after you take a right on Vail and another right on Nebraska which is the second right on your right.”
What she neglected to tell us was that Burnside is a gazillion blocks long. I drove through downtown Portland, across I-5, through ramshackle apartment complexes, through gorgeous neighborhoods, numerous strip malls and convenience stores, me, the truck and the float. I must have driven 75 blocks before finally pulling off the road, ready to give it all up. And then I noticed I was in the parking lot of our hotel.
That was it! I had finally found the cure for my unending desire to volunteer. Years have gone by where I never even thought once about raising my hand. Until I saw the Fathoms float in McCleary.
In the Emerald City, dreaming up floats that are yet to be,
– Robb