Thanksgiving Parade

I obviously fell off the "30 days of thankfulness" bandwagon; oh well, worse things have happened.

Let's get to the real reason for this post, the annual Jackson Parish Christmas Parade. Last year was the first year that Jonesboro State Bank made and entered a float in the parade, but because we were in San Antonio for Thanksgiving we missed it. Because it was such a great hit though, Thurston decided to enter again this year which meant we got to join in on the fun!

Thurston was the main force behind designing and building the float. He decided to build a "sleigh" on a 30 foot goose neck trailer, which was double the size of last year's float! It was phenomenal! Last year, Thurston manned the grill (on the float) and cooked hot dogs while the rest of the crew assembled the dogs with appropriate condiments, wrapped them with a bow and set them sailing. This year because of a torrential downpour, the dogs were cooked and wrapped prior to the parade. We still had the grill on board and did the best we could in the difficult conditions. Sadly, there were a few hot dog casualties as they landed in puddles of water/mud :(

Thankfully there were plenty of hands on deck to cook and wrap over 1,100 hot dogs!!! My parents made it into town for the parade, something they have never experienced, but always wanted to do. Winston's fiance and her family were in town along with the "veteran float crew" from last year. We were busy from morning until go time; we cut it close, but made it in time to jump on board and start throwing dogs.

Thurston also made a homemade potato launcher that was used to shoot JSB shirts to the crowd. He and Grayson manned that "station" while the rest of us focused on throwing dogs. The launcher worked extremely well and was so much fun. I'm sure we'll come up with other uses for this toy.

In a way, we were thankful that it rained b/c we ran out of hotdogs about 3/4 of the way through the parade route. Attendance was obviously extremely low due to the weather so I'm not sure what we would have done if there were more people. I'm sure Thurston will take this into account next year when determining how many dogs to make.

Below you can get a view of the front of the sleigh. Winston is manning the grill station near the "North Pole", Justin (a veteran from last year) is explaining the protocol and Maddie is probably just trying to stay warm and dry.
This was such a fun event to participate in and is just another reason to love small towns. I hope this becomes a tradition that we can look forward to doing, even if it is every other year!