Autumn officially started on September 22nd, but do you know when it officially began in the Allain household? September 22nd, actually. We abide strictly by the Gregorian Calendar, thank you very much.

But unofficially, Fall doesn’t kick off for us until the week of the New Holland Fair. It’s a yearly tradition for us. Erica gets super excited to see new and old friends and be around lots of people. I start complaining about seeing old and new friends and being around lots of people. Good times for the whole family.

The New Holland Parade is always on the Wednesday night of the fair, so last night we were there with our jackets on, our spirits soaring, and our cameras out to document enough material to make a blog post out of it. (Like I said from my Twitter account last night, I like to call it the “New Holland Parade of Blogging Material”.)

Some floats come by and you’re filled with pride, wishing it was you out there waving to the masses. Others come by and you’re filled with pity, wishing you could crawl under a rock and hibernate. It’s in this spirit that I present to you…

The 5 People You Don’t Want to be at the Parade.

(all crappy photos taken with my iPhone in poor lighting)

1.  The Vendor

Parents hate you because you’re yelling in their ear and you’re trying to take 7 of their hard-earned dollars in exchange for a glow-stick light saber that will be broken before you’re out of earshot. 75% of the kids at the parade despise you because they can’t have what you’re selling because their parents are onto you. That leaves a handful of kids who like you, because they’re there with grandpa, or because their parents don’t know how to say no. Congratulations, the only people who like you are spoiled grade-schoolers.

2.  The Liver

This is the organ donation portion of the parade. To the left is the Organ Donation Saves Lives truck, which was trying to run over people in order to drum up business. In the center of the picture is the heart. Or actually, a 50-year old man walking around with a detailed drawing of a heart hanging in front of and behind him. Not pictured is the liver, because I have no idea what a liver looks like, and couldn’t identify it out of the other organs.

3. The Rajah Temple String Band Drummer

No float excites me more every year than the Rajah Temple String Band. I don’t know what the Rajah Temple is, and frankly, I hope to keep it that way. All I know is 3 things: 1) the average age on this float is older than the average lifespan of human beings, 2) it sounds like they are playing the exact same song every year, and 3) any float that features 4-tiered stadium seating deserves to be recognized. And speaking of the music, as far as I can tell all the drummer does is play 8th notes on the cymbals and throw in an occasional snare hit. Who wouldn’t want to do that for 2.5 straight hours?

4. The Acoustic Guitar in the Worship Team Float

First off, if you’re a praise band playing on a float, you need to know that you are going to sound awful. U2 would sound like crap on a parade float. There’s a reason why everyone in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is lip-syncing to audio tracks. Second off, no one sounds worse on the float than the acoustic guitar guy. The bassist, drummer, and vocalists can at least hear themselves. Not the acoustic guitar guy, whose bright highs muddled mids get lost in the mix. Not to mention the fact that it’s 50 degrees out and his fingers are going to fall off if he has to play that F#m7 chord one more time.

5. Mimes on a Flatbed

I feel like writing anything here would take away from the image, so go ahead and enjoy the picture for a few more seconds. Seriously, just take it all in.

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Got a favorite (or least favorite) thing about your local parade?

Would love to hear about it.

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