Monday, June 04, 2007

The First Week of June

It is that time of year again-Float Week! In the Portland, Oregon area, we are in the midst of the Rose Festival and with the Grand Floral Parade this Saturday, they are working feverishly to get the floats ready for the parade. In the "olden days", when I had no husband or child, I would have been down there everyday, or as much as possible, working on the floats. It boggles my mind that I have been doing floats now for over 20 years. The first year we went down I was 11 years old and we showed up the the last Friday night just to see what it was all about. Liking what we saw, we came back the next year and we have returned almost every year since. My Junior year in high school I remember feeling sad that next year, my Senior year, would mean my last year at floats. None of the Seniors ever came back so I figured there was some rule out there preventing them. Obvisouly I was wrong.

After 20 years of gluing on seeds, dried flowers, and leaves, you pick up a few pointers:
*Third level scaffolding can be HOT! Warm air rises and you can feel the difference.
*Coconut is awesome to work with because it makes your hands soft and nice smelling. Strawflower sucks because it is pokey.
*The speed of your work is less important than how well you do your job. Having to do a patch
job saves no time.
*God Bless Elmer's glue.
*Scaffolding guys have great muscles.
*Flowers can make anything look better.
*When they say clothes you can get dirty, they mean clothes you can get dirty. We laugh at people in white.
*It is fun making something beautiful.

For those of you familiar with the floats, this year we are working on the Sister City float for Kaohsuing with Alice. It is a huge dragon on a flat bed so it looks like no water vials. I worked on the eyes, nose, and face, which was all onion seed, poppy seed, red and white coconut, cornmeal, and lentils. Who ever did the eyes didn't paper mache them so the lentils were a pain but the rest went on pretty easy. And the best thing-we are located in the big barn right by Dryland so lots of conversations with Sue and John. Sue loves Disneyland too! We have also seen Mrs. S at the Anhesier float (the horses in the front o fthe big barn), sisters Lynette and Juacita, Leslie, Dmitiri, and Kendra. And yesterday I won a prize in the decorator's raffle-4 free tickets to a baseball game or a soccer game at PGE Park. I was hoping for a gift certificate to my electric bill since they just raised their rates but it was better than winning an airplane hat.
Next year, I cross my fingers that I can do floats again. I love it, and I cannot explain why.

3 comments:

AMJ said...

Thanks for the report. D. wants to know, "is Leslie still fat and huge?" Have you seen Lynn, Scotty and crew? Are they doing floats this year? I miss the floats and would love to do them again someday. Although oddly enough I forget about them unless I am reminded. Must be those 3 kids running around me! Have fun picking straw flower out of your and coconut out of your toes!

AMJ said...

oops I meant to say picking straw flower out of your hair!

T-girl said...

Everytime I see that Orange stuff I think of floats, even told J "get that Orangy stuff" it takes everything off when he went to get something to fix a household mishap! LOL Oh, and I smell latice or strawflowers and I want to yak! I hate the smell of them. MAN I miss floats! Damn it, why couldn't it have been next week? I could come down and have a little fun (Big J is off and I could go play! LOL)! :(