Each year for the Fourth of July, the kids make a float and enter it in the local kids’ parade. We first found out about the parade in 2005. That year, Mason and his cousins dressed up in red, white and blue costumes and walked through the parade. We really didn’t start building floats until 2006. In 2006 we won with our rocket float, in 2007 we won with our birthday cake float, and in 2008 we won with our sailboat float.
There are four age categories (4 and under, 5-8, 9-12, and “group”), and each age category has three categories (most patriotic, best costume, and most creative). We always enter in the group category and although I don’t remember which won which, between 2006, 2007, and 2008, we managed to win one of each.
(In 2009 we took a break from competing and went to Branson instead.)
For the second year in a row now I’ve promised to build “Uncle Samtron 2000”, a gigantic patriotic robot, and for the second year in a row I’ve procrastinated so long that I’ve run out of time. This year I had to defer to Susan’s idea, “Surfin’ USA”, in which the kids would decorate a wagon, make surfboards, and play surfing music as we pulled them through the parade route.
Like every year, we started on the float around 8pm the night before the parade. Our floats are always a combination of my crazy ideas, a few ideas from the kids, and Susan’s practicality. (Which is why we have never built a giant robot, among other things.) We slapped some poster board on the sides of the wagon which Mason painted while Susan made some signs and I freehanded some surfboards out of cardboard, which Susan spray painted and the kids decorated. We put a total of 3 hours into the float, which is exactly what it looked like.
Saturday morning, the day of the parade, we loaded the float into the back of the truck and drove it up to the parade route. It was slightly drizzling when we got there, so we unloaded the float and parked it underneath a big tree. Susan had a 4th of July tarp, so we covered it up and parked it there, waiting for the rain to let up.
As we sat under the tree we watched float after float get unloaded and head to the official pavilion up ahead. Every float I saw looked better than ours, and I started crafting a “well kids, I’m sorry you didn’t win but next year we’ll have to put a little more effort into our float” speech. One float looked like it belonged in the Rose Bowl Parade — it was a giant frame, covered in tissue paper, mounted to a kid’s motorized car. It must’ve taken a week or two to build that thing! We saw lots and lots of bicycles and tricycles, covered in cardboard and crepe paper and streamers, and every one of them looked better than ours.
But the rain did not let up. Instead it rained harder, and harder. It rained so hard that the pavilion completely filled up. Some groups and their floats got stuck in the rain. And soon, they ended up going back home. The tissue paper float we saw was completely soaked and ruined. Some of the floats were covered in trash bags in an attempt to keep them dry.
The one advantage we had to everyone else was that, due to our surfing theme, both of my kids and their cousin were all wearing swimming suits. It was at that point that I made a judgement call. We could either leave, or we could walk the parade route with our float and our kids in swimming suits, and then leave. We decided on the latter and was just about ready to do it when an announcement was made at the pavilion. All floats under the pavilion would be judged there, and there would be no parade. Aw.
So we moved to the pavilion and we got judged and we won for most creative float in the group category, but we should not have — it’s just that all the other more creative floats had already been soaked and left. If anything, we should have won “most wet” or perhaps “most resilient”. Regardless, the kids were glad to win and I got to keep my “better luck next year” speech tucked in my back pocket for at least one more year.