o What: Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade, which turned 100 in 2012, features 14 all-floral floats, 17 marching bands, 19 equestrian units and many other special entries.
o When: 10 a.m. Saturday
o Where: Starts at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, 300 N. Winning St., heads through downtown Portland across the Burnside Bridge, along Southwest Fourth Avenue to Southwest Taylor Street.
o Cost: Reserved indoor and outdoor seating is available from $15-$30
o Information: rosefestival.org or battlegroundrosefloat.com.
The bustle of volunteers and the smell of glue and flowers inside the blue Battle Ground warehouse sometimes has Sandy Helyer seeing pink elephants.
o What: Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade, which turned 100 in 2012, features 14 all-floral floats, 17 marching bands, 19 equestrian units and many other special entries.
o When: 10 a.m. Saturday
o Where: Starts at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, 300 N. Winning St., heads through downtown Portland across the Burnside Bridge, along Southwest Fourth Avenue to Southwest Taylor Street.
o Cost: Reserved indoor and outdoor seating is available from $15-$30
o Information: rosefestival.org or battlegroundrosefloat.com.
Well, one pink elephant, at least — a shredded-coconut-covered one on the back of the town’s Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade float.
The creature, and accompanying chaos, is part of a special celebration of Battle Ground’s 60th Rose Festival parade, said Helyer, president of the float’s board of directors.
“It’s going to be a float depicting past floats,” she said, as volunteers cut palm fronds while waiting for a shipment of flowers on a rainy late May afternoon.
The desk-sized pink elephant is in honor of the “Elephantasy” float from 2003, which won the Kid’s Sweepstakes Award for most outstanding float selected by Junior Judges that year.
“They don’t even have that award anymore,” Helyer said.
Over the years, Battle Ground has taken home handfuls of awards for its floats, giving this year’s designers quite a bit to commemorate.
On one side of the new float is an orange tiger head, an homage to 1974’s “Greetings From Tiger Country,” which won second place that year for cities outside of Oregon with a population under 5,000.
Up front, a yellow and black bumble bee represents the “Buzzing with Spirit” float, which won the 2010 President’s Award.
Nearby a big yellow inchworm commemorates 1994’s “One Yard at a Time” float, which won the Clayton Hannon Award for best self-built float from a community or civic event.
That’s an interesting award, Helyer said, because Battle Ground now has the only Grand Floral Parade float made entirely by the community and through community donations.
Other floats in the parade are made by professional companies, which let community members stop by to help out, she said.
“Ours is 100 percent volunteer-made, and every year it’s torn down because we have no space to store it,” Helyer said.
In true community form, volunteers have saved and reused materials as much as possible over the years. The float chassis is actually the same one the group has used since the 1956 parade, she said.
In a balcony area inside the warehouse, the group has also saved extra organic materials — like onion seed, rice and wheat berry — from past floats, just in case they’re needed.
That came in handy this year with all the images hearkening back to past floats, said Barb Evans, the decorating team lead.
“This year’s a dibby dabby sort of thing with materials,” Evans said.
In some cases, the throwback decorations are a little too realistic, she added.
“We’re trying to get rid of some things we’ve been storing for years,” Evans said. “Some of the product on the float this year is the same as was used on the decorations of the original float they’re depicting.”
Volunteers also have to be careful when they put things like grass seed on the float, because under the right weather conditions, they might start to grow, the two said.
“We’ve had 100-degree weather, and we’ve had it near freezing,” Helyer said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
It’s important to keep the float dry because “we do not want to have to mow it,” Evans added.
“One year the grass started to grow and we had to trim it with scissors,” Helyer said with a laugh.
Things were a little different in Battle Ground’s first parade in 1955, Helyer said.
Back then, it wasn’t so much about the float.
“We had maybe 800 residents, and they all came together and bought the marching band new uniforms,” Helyer said. “They wanted to show them off in the Rose Parade, but they had to have a float to be in the parade. So somebody had a horse and buggy and they used that as their float so the marching band could play.”
The first float, called “Wonderful One-Hoss Shay,” won an honorable mention.
