An excellent parade with a very sad ending...
The day started out quite cool - ok, chilly when Danny, Scott and
Madison arrived at the Covert HippoPlex to unload their trailers.
The sun was just coming up and Scott already had his M38A1 off the trailer
followed by Danny's M151A2/M416 and Madison's M37. The three of them
then moved their truck/trailer combo's to the back of the car lot.
Once that was done, the three headed into Hutto about 1.5 miles away and
found the staging area where Danny checked in for the group.
A short time later, Jeff L driving Rory's Unimog and Rory driving his
5-Ton arrived and staged. Not too long after that, John SS showed up
in his M35A2, then a surprise showed up with Curtis J and his wife Shiela
in their 5-Ton truck/tractor. (if your keeping count, that's five
BIG trucks, one MEDIUM truck and two LITTLE quarter-tons). Then
Claude and Jeanne V with their grandson arrived. And the people just
kept coming. Jane also arrived with Rory's kids Caitlin and
Patrick.
By now, we had a party going! The Hutto Lavender Lightening girls
soccer team was decorating John SS's M35A2 and they provided halloween
decorated doughnuts to the group. The staging area soon became
crowded with all the entries for the event and the start time approached
and went without movement.
We learned from a parade marshal that EMS had to be cleared and that
was the 30 minute or so delay. Then at 10:30, the parade
began. We moved slowly up the street to Hwy 79 where the highway was
blocked off to one lane of traffic in each direction in order to accommodate
the parade. People lined the right side of the highway eight or ten
deep. The crowd was huge for such a small town. As Danny put
it, Hutto is the only parade we do that's "...a five mile parade in a
one mile town'. As soon as we started, it was over where we made it
back to our staging area and grouped up for the next part of the day.
John SS cleaned his truck off and departed to pick up his big box
trailer for the truck, and the rest of the group departed to the Covert
Auto HippoPlex for the car show starting later in the day.
On a side note, we have since learned a young parade participant was accidentally
killed when she fell off the float she was riding. Our sincerest
condolences go out to the family.