Life as a Parade in Hotchkiss

Hotchkiss Downtown Improvement Flower Queens at their Delta County Fair Parade float Saturday morning. –        Photo by Tom Wills

Life as a Parade in Hotchkiss

By Thomas Wills

According to Mary Hockenbery of the Hotchkiss Downtown Improvement/Merchants’ Committee the first lesson to be learned in having an entry in the Delta County Fair parade is that nobody shows up at 8 a.m., the time listed on the entry form, to begin lining up. And not many are there by 9 a.m. This is the North Fork and being in a big hurry (except when driving) is not part of Valley tradition.  But being neophytes as far as the Fair parade was concerned Mary and driver/trailer owner Kim Shay showed up dutifully at the earlier hour and found themselves the lone entry on an otherwise empty street neatly painted with lines and numbers.  It does give you time for neighboring.

I arrived at about 9:30 lugging my giant, handmade cardboard flower and a couple of the wooden ones made by the K-8 shop and art classes.  To my mild chagrin I found that Mary H., Mary Simmons and Robbie Winne (of The Rose) had all dressed up in full flower queen regalia whereas I had only managed to don jeans (instead of my summer shorts) , a Town of Hotchkiss t-shirt and my rarely worn Stetson.  Definitely under-costumed.

Kim Shay, who operates Gambles Ace Hardware as well as ranching with her husband, had brought along her Junior Partner, Carson, who seemed to be having fun. Kim, an active core member of the Committee, had made the float possible by volunteering her truck and trailer and well as the hay bales, the foundation of rural parade floats everywhere.

At least my hat went with those of nearby parade participants including the horse people and the Delta County Republicans who wore a lot of cowboy hats but had left their giant Your Gun/Your Right float at home in favor of strolling casually behind a pickup truck. It being an off year for elections, there wasn’t much in the way of politics happening and I had agreed to honor the non-partisan nature of our float by not wearing my newest Bernie Sanders for President shirt—or even a Bernie button. Commissioner Bruce Hovde came over to shake hands and commented on a giant sunflower that Robbie had dug up that morning and was already looking a little droopy.

I was happy to find that Herald Crawford columnist, Marla Bishop, was to be behind us. (It’s impossible to be bored when Marla is anywhere around.) She and Bob and Joan Heid’s granddaughter, and miniature horse Stormy, were all dressed in a cowgirl flower theme that went well with our float.  The Hotchkiss Bulldogs cheerleaders were to be behind us and then Marla, but they switched places due to the fact that every time the cheerleaders began doing a pom pom shaking dance routine the little horse became a miniature bucking bronco, flowers flying out of his side panier baskets.

We enjoyed watching Liz Heidrick warm up her dance/cheerleaders and try to do some last minute choreography fine tuning. Sort of watching a local-local version of rehearsals for a Chorus Line.  I wondered how they would manage once the trailer was moving.  You’d need good sea legs for that. (They managed fine.)

In front of us in the lineup was the Hotchkiss Elks which included the Mayor and First Lady of Hotchkiss, Wendell and Esther Koontz. Their group included a pickup and multiple, decorated four-wheelers.  (Pictured above) I wandered around with my camera as things slowly coalesced spending the most time on getting good shots of the horse and wagon teams, my favorites.  Mary H. noted that someone had stabbed a table fork into a gate post to the Hotchkiss Ranch field.  We both took pictures of that because of the fork/North Fork/local foods connection. Okay…

The parade itself was a bit of an anticlimax.  The crowd was relatively light but people waved and sometimes cheered and we waved back and smiled big.  I bounced and rotated my giant flower, trying to add kinetic interest.  Mary Simmons mimed throwing candy or bouquets to the audience.  The rules precluded any candy throwing from the floats much to the disappointment of many small children who had possibly been misinformed by parental propaganda.

The audience grew a little thicker near to the fairgrounds entrance and in we went and then a right into the alley and it was done.  As we bumped down the alley everyone had ideas on how we could make a better float next year.  Next year—another parade.