Ho ho ho!!

Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I want to dive right in and share with you, my dear friend, some pictures of our Christmas parade and caroling tour that took place Saturday the 6th of December. The parade was possibly the most well-attended parade I have ever witnessed in these parts, and may have even outshone the Knoxville parade in entries. Last year's parade was so well planned and executed by my friend Lisa Griffith Duggins, and I wondered how anyone could step in after that and measure up. I must say, however, that Tammy Barger turned in a stalwart effort planning this year's events.

We had many floats entered, with all kinds of love and sweat going into their construction. Here are some of the good ones....

(Click to enlarge)

All these were great..... some even exceptional in the care taken to ready them for the parade. What a blessed little town we live in! The parade was so long, we caught our own tail in the process, with the front catching the back as we came off Main Street, turning up Winter's Gap then right on Kingston Avenue in front of Daugherty's Garage.

Begging your indulgence in advance, I wanted to show you the float I worked on for the church where I worship. We kinda jumped headfirst down the well, (which is becoming one of my favorite sayings, because it so graphically describes much of what I and my associates at church and in the Historical Society are about).

We took first place in the competition.

Here we are almost ready to make the perilous journey down to the staging area....

Here we are in the staging area loading up and ready to go.....

Here we are in the procession wending our way past Daugherty's Garage and heading up the hill toward the magnificent Cumberland Presbyterian Church...

What you can't tell in these still pictures are the pinwheels that were motorized and spun like whirling dervishes, or the waterfall underneath the bridge. We put a huge amount of effort into this float, cutting and gluing the scalloped shingles for the castle roof, laminating the wood for the curved arches of the bridge, building a reservoir and pump for the water cascade, etc. From the pictures you can see that the arches had to withstand a lot of load, so we performed a static load test on it before we deemed it safe to ride on. I think you could park a coal truck on it.

I hope you like it...

After the parade came the caroling tour. I wasn't able to take many pictures of the caroling; in fact, all these pictures of both the parade and caroling tour were taken by my good friend Cletus Bolling. Cletus helped me for several days on the winning float. He is a master of many disciplines, and an all-around great guy. He and Lorraine are faithful members of the Oliver Springs Historical Society, being very active in all aspects of our labors. Cletus and Lorraine are unsung heroes of our Society. What I have done here is to make them slightly more "sung" than before.....    In fact, if you want to see good things being done for our town, look to the Historical Society, because a huge share of the good being done can be traced back to our group with the help of Mayor Hepler, Administrator Boling, and our friends and allies on City council.

Oh, speaking of labors, let me show you what our ladies did with the Daugherty Garage display window....    

We took the backdrop wall and fireplace I had built , and the ladies worked their magic. I think it looks splendid, don't you? I thought you'd heartily agree..

What you can't see from the Garage pictures is the tremendous amount of work that has gone into the renovation. The roof is now jacked up to its original height, trusses repaired, load bearing walls installed, support beams and timbers in place, years of rot and damage removed. The old canopy in front that was rotted and in danger of collapse has been removed and preparations are underway to replace it. We are now ready to start the cosmetic and aesthetic renovations to the proud old structure, which is not nearly as tired, forlorn  and weary as at this time last year..

I am going to try and take some pictures of the work today and post it for you, dear reader. Keep checking back for updates....

                                                            Robbie