My Christmas Parade

I have lived in the Temecula Valley for 10 years and have never attended the Old Town Electric Lights Parade. To be perfectly frank, I don't care for parades. I think they are generally a line up of poorly constructed floats decorated with a bunch of self important people. However, last night I felt oddly compelled to grab the wife and kids (and by that I mean she dragged me out there) and trek out to old town to join the denizens of this fair valley in all of this festive fanfare, which I was sure would produce a generous portion of blog fodder.

As we arrived a little over an hour early, traffic had already begun to back up significantly. My wife myopically suggested that the majority of people were just headed home. She was wrong. However, we decided to grab some dinner at the golden arches, which turned into a great idea because we discovered another parking area that was not nearly as far a walk as the other secondary lots. So we enjoyed our dinner and walked over to the parade staging area.

We found a spot near the tail end of the parade. We were warned that we might miss some of the parade because we were technically outside of the parade route. I was sure that once they saw the hundreds of people with us, the floats would extend their parade route to include us. I was not wrong. We did miss seeing the marching bands in all of their glory but we still heard five different renditions of Jingle Bells and one version of Angels We Have Heard on High (thanks Calvary Chapel Murrieta for marching to the beat of a different drum).

While standing around waiting for the parade to begin, the sidewalks began to resemble a line crush at a black Friday sale. People were elbowing and pushing their way through others to get a better seat. Just as the parade was to begin a woman with two little girls and three pink lawn chairs stepped in between me and the rest of my family and tried to set up camp. I didn't say a thing (I'm much to non-confrontational for that); I just resumed the position I had been in prior to their trespassing. Once the woman saw that this giant of a man had every intention of looming over her she quickly assessed her position and found it less than desirable. She picked up and moved on, presumably to sit in someone else's lap.

The parade began and the first entrant to make it's way past the end of the route was the Great Oaks Marching Band with a rousing rendition of the aforementioned Jingle Bells. They were decked in Christmas lights and looked very festive. Then there was a line of City Council members, Community Service representatives and a few other civil servants waving and bequeathing a merry Christmas on all of the parade revellers.

We then saw the first of what seems like a thousand different boyscout troops walk through the parade. I didn't know we had so many different troops in the valley. I am not entirely sure why we need so many different troops. It seems like they could start one and just let anyone from the valley join. But they had a plethora of them. It was comical at times. There was a stereotypical "nerd" troop leader. He was walking in full camping gear (backpack, sleeping roll, pots and pans and a fishing pole, complete with fake fish). He had his little scarf tied around his neck and was wearing the trade mark cargo shorts with hiking boots and brown tube socks pulled half way up his calf. He looked like a hairy, nerdy version of Shelley Long from Troop Beverly Hills. I yelled, "We don't need no stinkin' badges" but he either didn't hear me or was pretending not to because he just kept walking.

The highlight of the scouting portion of the parade was when one boy scout, walking along side the float holding the rest of his troop, chided a crowd member by irritatedly calling back, "I'm not a cub scout!" I hope at their next den meeting they discuss the meaning of the word "semantics".


Next followed a few local businesses and clubs. There were cheer groups and martial artsy people along side a dachshund club and a bus of retired people on "holiday". At one point, Arby's made an appearance with two people dressed as the hand thing that stands out front and waves people in and two girls dressed as elves. One was dressed as a male elf and the other-well, based on her costume, I can only assume she is Arby's hood rat.

There were some local celebrities on hand, but the highlight for me was meeting Drippy, the water drop. He represented the Rancho Water district and I had a few questions for him about my water bill. I suspect it's some sort of conspiracy because he flat out refused to answer any of the hard -hitting questions I asked.

Then a float of little beauty queens passed by. It was full of little girls who wore enough makeup to disguise congress as a bunch of zombie's (okay, that analogy maybe lacking in sufficiency) and who will no doubt wind up on an episode of E! True Hollywood Stories as a cautionary tale of toddlers and tiaras (at the very least they'll wind up on The Soup being made fun of by Joel McHale).

The next set of "celebrities" to walk by were some of the contestants from various reality TV shows. There were a couple of the tap dancing dads from America's Got Talent, some Survivors, Amazing Racers, and two Big Brothers. They passed by with Santa close behind, which made me speculate as to what Santa might bring these people. I surmised that fire and a compass would make suitable gifts for the Survivors and Racers respectively; the tap dancing dads might get some new tap shoes and I am certain the Big Brother contestants would receive industrial- grade antibiotics.

There were some 95 different entrants in this small town parade. One of the best was the Volkswagon Club that included 25 different VW's. There were Bugs, Buses and one Kia Spectra. I didn't just make a typographical error. For some reason the VW club was anchored by a 2001 Kia Spectra.

The grand finale to this little parade was a float with St. Nicolas himself riding a sleigh bedecked in lights and tossing candy to the kids in the street. Or at least that's what I imagined it would look like. We left with about four entrants to go. Both boys had seen enough (as had their parents) and were ready to go. All in all a good time was had by all.

I have not yet decided if we will make a repeat appearance at next year's parade. I think I have gotten all out of it that a spectator can get. I say spectator because, although I am not sure how, I think it would be great to be in next year's parade. So this year I shall endeavor to be an exemplary citizen. One so worthy of note that the parade planners are compelled to replace Santa with me. I will be so loved and admired that they'll make me honorary Mayor. Either that or I'll just start a Boy Scout Troop.