Make way for the parade
BUG GUTS & BEAUTY
With the Fair only a memory the last signs of summer are rapidly approaching. Macy’s, the department store hit on a singular idea long ago: Make a fuss and people will beat a path to the store. What is the City doing to drag eyes, britches, and the wallets in those britches into town?
There are signs and web pages with some ideas. Macy’s deserve a mention because today there is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Originally intended to get shoppers into the store, it now marks the official start of the holiday season. People love a parade and people love to shop. Combine the two and there is a simple result – more business.
The Fair was a bit nicer this year. Finally many of the exhibit spaces and exhibits are exceeding expectations. Forty and 50 years ago there were two midway sections. Two entrances with large numbers of cars inside and outside the fairgrounds and racing every night. Burlesque shows, gambling dens, and other scandalous devices designed to part money from the pockets of visitors added to the exciting event of the Fair. Cleaned up now, it is a very tame creature.
A parade would liven things up. Have a night light parade. Lighting for trucks and cars is relatively cheap and looks so cool. Since the Fair is held on two consecutive weekends there could be a contest of who can do a better parade. The Kiwanis Club could take on the Rotary. Which one can have more participants than the other? The goal is to raise attendance by 20 percent. One parade could feature the animals and the other one could showcase mechanical stuff. Toss in a heap of beauty pageants, they are a dime a dozen in some communities, some farm trucks, harvesters, and fire trucks and a marching band or two. Dress this up with some huge klieg lights searching the sky and more flashing lights and now we have an event to draw the meek and modest to the Fair. Offer prizes for distance traveled and unique contraptions to excite the eye. Put on a show and people will trample the woods to get here.
While here those visitors can enjoy such local treats as Houlton Farms ice cream, Rib Truck Bar-be-que, and band-aids and bismol from the hospital. The party to remember. What people would want to remember will be left up to the imagination. But people would remember the fantastic opening and closing moments of the Fair.
Done right, those people would find lots of cool stuff to do like Pulling a Michaud’s truck away from the Weasel; trots at the trotting track; and cotton candy eaten until it comes out of the nose. Yeah, the Fair is coming back! Everybody loves a parade. Done right it can bring in more people. Anyone have some bunting?
Orpheus Allison is a photojournalist living in The County who graduated from UMPI and earned a master of liberal arts degree from the University of North Carolina. He began his journalism career at WAGM television later working in many different areas of the US. After 20 years of television he changed careers and taught in China and Korea.
