The CroakerFest Parade

In the blistering heat today, Oriental celebrated July 4th (a few days late) with our CroakerFest Parade. We had a very large version of Old Glory, made with ... (can you look closely? What are all those things hanging there, spray-painted red, white, and blue?) ...

Yep! Milk bottles!
The colors were passed by, and we all stood.

Here's the local band.

This will be a long post, because it was a  L  O  N  G  parade :) We had our share of old cars:

(This blue caddy is often seen around town.)

Here's a lovely Jaguar. Notice this is the official parade car for the Oriental Farmers Market! During the parade, we market vendors were at our stalls, cheering along. I was glad to have a spot, a chair, and a shady tent, during the parade. It was 98º and hot as blazes.

The rest of our Farmers Market get-up:

We had about 7 John Deers in the parade, of course. Pamlico County is a very agricultural place.

Oriental is also the site of an annual Dragon Boat Race.

Here's the front end of a dragon boat.

It's a very long boat, long enough for 12 people and a drummer.

Quite a crowd gathered in front of the Bean.

A Lion's Club representative. He must have been melting in that suit! Notice that the little puppies have manes!

These two boys rode by several times in their silly hats. That's a crab hat.

Little Italy is a restaurant nearby. Their float was a giant pizza, and I'm here to tell you that I do believe it was a real pizza. I ran out there to get a close up shot, and I could smell it! And yes, of course it made me hungry.

This was a cute float: The Fishin' Hole. That's the name of the theme song from The Andy Griffith Show. The man on the back of the float was playing the song and whistling it. And the little boy in the middle of the road, about four years old, was meandering along behind, with his rod in hand. He was supposed to be Opie. Just adorable.

A local Christian ministry had its own interesting contribution.

These ladies of a certain age were sporting funny long t-shirts.

I'm not exactly sure what these are supposed to be. Underneath, they're some sort of baby scooter, but the pointy green covers? You got me!

The ridiculous old men on their cooler scooters were very funny. There were about a dozen of them, and they even had their own recovery "vehicle" (a larger cooler, with a larger fellow) to assist if one of the little scooters lost power.

Kim is my market neighbor. We wilted slowly as the morning progressed, but we stuck with it!

The parade ended with eleven fire/emergency vehicles from various little towns and villages in the county.

All in all, it was quite a good showing! I was pleased. Julia got candy. They also threw Mardi Gras necklaces and frozen cool pops, which I thought was a grand idea on a hot day.
So that's our July 4th! Now we're going out to watch fireworks this evening on a friend's deck over the water.