by guest blogger, Bill
I hate Christmas parades!
Don’t get me wrong. I love the holidays. The Christmas stuff starts going up the day after Halloween and stays up til after Super Bowl Sunday. It’s just Christmas parades that drive me nuts. Or maybe more like being in the parades.
After a two year unpaid sabbatical from the radio business where I dabbled in sports marketing, studentization (my fancy word for going back to school), substitute teaching, house remodeling, and bumming(the latter of which I was most successful according to my wife), I am back in the radio game. One of my most important responsibilities is to promote the station. Our particular station has a reputation of being heavily involved in the community. That’s a GOOD thing, believe me. I love the fact that the public knows who we are! The more people that listen, the bigger my bonus! A major part of promoting the station during the holidays is going to as many Christmas parades as possible.
Every little bitty Podunk town in North Mississippi has a Christmas parade. Some of these towns do not even have a stop light, but they have a parade. Last time I checked there were 18 Christmas parades in our listening area. That’s a lot of Santas!
A parade in North Mississippi means showing up an hour early, sitting in a parking lot looking at all of the pageant moms primping their freezing daughters AND/OR sons, driving very slowly behind the local high school band or alderman or antique tractor, blast “Merry Christmas from the Family” over and over and over, while waving at people, smiling, and pretending that they actually know who you are. A lot of them are fans of the station, but some just look at us and yell out the name of the competition (what are THESE fruitcakes thinking, that it’s going to hurt my feeling and I will give them a t-shirt?). FUN.
In years past we had four people on the full time staff to help with the parades and my show was so late that I only had to do two or three Saturday parades every year. Now there are only two of us (damn corporate budget cuts), me and my morning show partner, Kelli. She wants us to ride together to help promote our show, SOOOO that means a lot of pretending to be important! Luckily (for me at least) a lot of the towns picked the same dates to block traffic on Main Street. On the day of one of our most important parades, four other towns that we normally grace with our presence paraded at the same time.
Every parade has the beauty queens and kings. Yes, kings. Pageants are no longer just for the girls. And every queen has to be in the local parade. In the New Albany parade we met Miss, Mister, Little Miss, Little Mister, Junior Miss, Toddler, Baby, Teeny, and Itsy Bitsy Union County. NO JOKE! These were actual titles! Not to mention all the local school beauty review winners (male and female), and representatives of local dance studios! And every one has a crown! Now in most parades the queens are wearing the requisite formal gowns and high heels. If it is cold, like is has been around this area for the past few weeks, an expensive fur coat is of upmost importance. Hey, you gotta look fancy! The New Albany parade is a little different. I have never seen so many tiaras over camouflage EVER! That’s a look to go for! Mossy Oak and rhinestones! Nice!
We headed over to the metropolis of Mantachie for their parade on a Saturday afternoon. This is one of those no stop light back woods towns. Nice little town with a great place to get a chocolate shake! Every teenager with a four-wheeler decided that was the event for them. As we sat in front of the high school watching the parade go past us since we were important enough to escort Santa (while blasting Jeff Foxworthy’s “Twelve Days of Christmas”) I saw some interesting innovations. I never thought to install a car stereo in an old cooler and bungee it to the front rack of an ATV. Tres chic! One young man, who didn’t have a four-wheel, tractor, motorcycle, or horse, but REALLY wanted to be in the parade, decided to throw a bunch of tinsel on his old riding lawnmower and cruise the mile and a half stretch of highway.
The big parade, of course, is the Tupelo parade. Every politician and marching band from a three county area shows up. This is the one parade that the local TV stations actually show up for. A good friend of mine is the new community relations guy for the TV group in town so it is his job to get the news anchors to these public events. He borrowed a convertible and loaded up some of the news crew to wave to the adoring crowd. Half-way through the parade, he pulled over in front a store owned by some other friends of ours, GOT OUT of the car, and borrowed the facilities! Dude stopped the parade to go pee! Seriously! This parade is televised live on local cable and the dork makes the big time news guys sit in the car and wait while he recycles his diet coke! The biggest problem I have with this is we were WAAAAy in front and did not hear about this until late in the afternoon! Kelli and I tried to call him, but he has yet to return our calls. I don’t know why. He should be used to us making fun of him on the air by now. We’ve been doing it for years!
You know, maybe these parades aren’t so bad after all.
7 comments:
FUNNY! Loved the lawn mower and Paul holding up the parade. Great descriptions! I could "see" everything in my mind, and I didn't attend one parade.
I agree, Misty! I could see everything in my mind, and I don't even live down in the South. This could make such a great scene in a book or for a sitcom.
Bill needs to guest blog more often. This was such a fun blog to read!
Dude, you're giving me terrible flashbacks. LOL! I remember these things when I was in radio back in AR. I wasn't the morning person but our morning guy refused to let anyone in the public see him. Don't ask. He was weird. But saying that about people in radio is redundant.
There was the one in Cleveland (no stop light!) where I was their first ever Grand Marshall. I got to ride in the convertible and then host the Christmas show. In other words, I had to WORK. Yeah, thanks.
What I never understood was that our station would broadcast the parade every year. Uhm...it's a freaking parade. You kind of have to SEE it, ya know. We would actually stand out in the street trying to describe the thing. And this was in a town of 6500 people. It's not like everyone in town wasn't already out there. LOL!
Thanks for the kind words! I really appreciate it, but you might give me delusions of grandure! I may have to start work on MY novel and beat Misty to the editors!
Terri, don't you love small towns where the social event of the year involves the county fairground!
And I still haven't heard from Paul I may have to offer to buy lunch! He's tighter with a buck than I am!
Tell Bill that he should know, when you gotta go, you gotta go. Also, remind him that when Hannah was a baby, she was one of the Itsy Bitsy tiny queens or whatever you call them. Remember? And you and Gram were the stage Mom/Grandma.
By the way, I have started one of these blog things myself. Check it out. thehopperclan.blogspot.com
Great blog, Bill!
We have one of those parades too complete with Santa on the firetruck. You think it'd a Southern thing? We have some sad-sack floats, but we have some pretty impressive ones too, especially to be constructed by volunteers from church and civic groups.
When I taught high school, the club I advised had a clown corps that was a popular part of our parade. The little ones loved them almost as much as they loved Santa. Then I had to be at the parade to cheer the clowns and to make sure all of them had rides home afterwards. These days I watch it inside on the local TV station and feel grateful that somebody else is driving all over the county delivering stranded kids. :)
Misty, I could imagine myself at every one of these parades you were describing! Hilarious!
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