Patch Blog: Your LCF Parade Float Needs You!

Here’s a great holiday deal – it costs little, isn’t too far and may just make you feel darn good.  Not bad for this time of year eh? But it’s available only through this weekend.

What about a (short) turn working hands-on  for an all-volunteer Tournament of Roses town float? We find the world’s troubles seem a bit further away after a five-hour shift devoted to funny-looking pink pigs.

Under the freeway bridge this week, the La Canada-Flintridge’s Rose Parade entry entitled ‘If Pigs Could Fly” is taking final shape.

A dedicated band of float coordinators brilliantly directs the show, of course, with help from folks young and old who iron corn husks (yes, really, 4 hours straight) to be glued onto “airplane wings,’’  staff the glue shack ( different kinds for various uses, warn my teens -- be careful!),  carry buckets of flowers to refrigerated trucks, offer tours, clean, cut, sell.  (Important note: work available for those of us who prefer to sit , as well as for those who can reach, stretch, climb and lift!)

The volunteers -- from Orange County and Missouri and Sacramento (one table, one recent morning), come to contribute, or give back, or to try something new. Oh, and the stories they tell.

Paula from Missouri gave a holiday weekend this year  to help the town of Joplin, flattened by that May 22 tornado. She’s here this week with a niece from Fountain Valley and others who drove up for the day – “just because that’s what we do.”  Two others took vacation days from work to be here, for a town in which they don’t live but for an experience they love.

The Glendale high school student wishes his mom would let him do a double shift, but she thinks mornings are enough. His enthusiasm is so welcome; he can lie on his back and affix corn husks – something we, uh, more mature volunteers are reluctant to try.

Others watching the goings-on are worried: “Aren’t you behind this year?” one grandmother asks. “How will you be ready in time?”

We suspect that, somehow, the pigs WILL fly down Colorado on Monday (watch for entry No. 72).

Want to be a part? Volunteer shifts are available through the weekend, on an as-needed basis, perhaps especially in the final-crunch hours.

Click on ‘Under the Bridge volunteers/ decorating week” at http://www.lcftra.org/home.php or just stop by the corner of Foothill and Hampton Road.