Sarah & Our First Prize Float at the Fosterville Field Days Parade
Best Commercial Float
My wife Sarah and I participated in the Fosterville Field Days parade on Saturday. Mostly, through the years, I've only stood along the edge of the road watching a variety of marching bands, the strutting leaders throwing their batons twirling high into the air; pretty pageant queens waving adorably and smiling as they rode one of the many colourful floats; politicians, celebrities and such in fancy automobiles waving with their award winning smiles and of course clowns doing what they do, making the crowds, especially the wide-eyed children laugh and giggle. I can't even say that Fosterville is a small town; the only buildings of public note are a Community Centre and a Baptist Church, so the parade as one would expect would not be that huge or elaborate and thankfully the parade route was very short since it was a very hot day. The parade didn't have any marching bands but it did have politicians - the Premier of New Brunswick, David Alward and the Minister of Finance, Blaine Higgs were there shaking hands, waving and smiling to all. Rumour has it that the Premier's crew called ahead to make sure no "frackers" would be in Fosterville. A friend of ours by the name of Jacques said, "There won't be no frackers showing up around here, we all have guns."
Since we were participants in the parade; No. 8 of about twenty, I didn't get to stand by the road side under the shade of a large tree and enjoy the fire engines, tractors, a few floats and whatever else slowly made its way down the parade route, which was about three blocks long. However, we did get to see a big bull moose, at least the hind end of one because that's what was strolling along the road in front of us. Not a real bull moose - no - it was two teenage girls dressed up in a moose's costume and it was very comical the way it was portrayed. The lead girl made noises like the mating call or the lost call of the last bull moose, while the one at the end, whenever they stopped in front of a group of children, she would drop a load of tootsie rolls on the side of the road for them to scoop up.
Sarah baked 500 small cookies shaped and coloured like the Canadian maple leaf, which we handed out to many of the bystanders, young and old alike. It was a lot of fun and I think the older people were a bit surprised when I ran up and handed them a cookie enclosed inside a cellophane bag with a Golden Unicorn Farm logo attached to it because usually just the children get the goodies that are thrown along the edge of the road. We figured there were about 700-750 people lined up on both sides of the parade route because we came up short on cookies. Sarah, her spirit always gay and uplifting said, "Next year, I'll bake 700 cookies!"
Our entry won first prize for best commercial float, which made Sarah ecstatically happy. I never even thought prizes were given away but much to my surprise, they were. We won $30.00 but I think Sarah would have been even happier, if they had given her a ribbon instead of money. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of Brendan Leeman driving the ride-'em lawn mower that was pulling the float - freekin' camera decided to pack it in.
Shortly after the parade had ended, Sarah and I went to Anita and Bill Leeman's place for a party - the cold beer sure tasted good after sweating my way down the hot parade route handing out cookies! As evening approached, some thunder clouds gathered in the nearby distance and then began drifting towards us. We could see the heavy rain falling over the lake but it just moseyed on past us, dropping a few rain drops as it went by. Around 9:30pm, we drove up to the Community Centre where a DJ was playing some canned music. The parking lot was full of pick-up trucks - must have been about 100 young people having a tail-gate party - no booze was allowed in the Community Centre. When Sarah and I went through the doors planning to kick up our heels and have us a dance or two, besides the DJ, only one couple was dancing - but hey - more room for us to dance and leap around to some good old rock and roll music. Before long, our friends from the party joined us and we all had a great time. I don't know if the young folks were going to dance or not. However, after some coaxing from us telling them that if they didn't head on in and pay 5 bucks, this would be the last dance held, they eventually all went inside - place was really rocking then. I heard tell that after we left the dance shortly before midnight, we missed a pretty good cat fight - a couple of young girls decided to sort things out.
So much for the parade and dance; it's all over for another year. Besides baking more cookies for next year's parade, Sarah is going to try to convince the people who hand out the prizes to give the winners some ribbons as well - she's determined to hang a blue ribbon in the coffee shop next Fosterville Field Days.
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