Picture Sunday

Hello, end of weekenders. Welcome to a special edition of Picture Sunday.

I got a most fortuitous email yesterday. It was from my old buddy the DeepFatFriar, offering to take over the Picture Sunday helm this weekend. He titled his email "An Offer You Can Refuse," but really, that is one I definitely could not refuse.

So let's turn it over to the Friar!

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Thanks, Bet, for letting me report on the big doin's in the little town I don't live in. (I live about 239 feet outside the town.)

The town I don't live in is not the biggest town in the county. There are only 1300 or so people in it. (The biggest town has over 4000, and the entire county about 17000 spread across about 350 square miles.) But it is widely acknowledged to have the best Christmas parade in the county. There are several reasons for this: it snowed during the Christmas parade, as is only fitting; it is a drive-in parade--you can watch it from inside your car; they throw candy from the floats and vehicles, so it is like hollowe'en, only different; and it was, this year, seventeen minutes long--brevity really is the soul of paradical wit. And it's better than the Macy's parade in every way.

And I want to apologize for the quality of the pictures. It was dusk and snowing. The little camera did the best it could. It really did.

So here is the parade route, lined with the cars you can watch it from. One of them is mine.




















As you can see, there are a lot of cars there. But to be fair, people mostly got out of them when the parade started. We're tough people in the town I don't live in. We can handle 17 minutes outside of the car to watch the parade. But we leave the motor running and the heat on.

Here is the first vehicle in the parade.





















And here is the first float, sponsored by a radio station I never heard of, or heard.





















The local cub and boy scout troops came next. The cubs walked, but the boys rode.




















They were followed by a truck from the local telephone co-op, then the Woman's Chorus and Chorale form the county high school.




















Unlike the Macy's parade, the groups here did not perform along the way. They just threw candy. (I told you our's is better in every way!) This group was followed by some church floats and emergency vehicles and the local beauty contest queen and more emergency vehicles from all over the county and our own dear little town.






















I told you the camera was having trouble with the conditions. Let's try that again, as this was actually my favorite float.




















I'm really sorry I couldn't get a better pic of that. It was great. It's "The Christmas Train." On the side of the engine, it says, "Powered by the Gospel." I wanted to follow them a quarter mile to the end of the parade route and ask them exactly how many gospels they had to burn to power the float down the parade route. But it was too damn cold and the parade was not over. Yet.

More emergency vehicles. At least one of which was picking up people along the way who apparently were overcome by the grandeur of it all.





















And even the Macy's parade did not have a river raft in it.





















And still more emergency vehicles. I hope nothing bad happened in the rest of the county, because every vehicle and person who could have done anything about it was in this parade.

And then, no sleigh, no reindeer, no fanfare, Santa and the missus.





















And that was that. Seventeen minutes start to end. Given the size of the town, I think it was at least as good as the Macy's thing, the official "As Seen on TV" Parade. If we had ten million people in the little town I don't live in, we could probably put on a parade with all those baloons. In fact, we'd have to. Because if there were ten million people in the town I don't liive in, they'd have to be stacked 147 deep to fit in it, so the parade would have to be balloons to get through the town floating over the bodies.

So that's that. Merry Christmas, all y'all.

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And that's it from Friarland. Thanks, DFF!

Happy week.