It was a muggy, mid-’80s morning when Saturday’s Laurie Hillbilly Fair Parade was scheduled to start. Umbrellas and brightly-colored ponchos dotted both sides of the O Road parade route as I searched for a spot to park.
Near Old St. Pats’ Church I pulled in beside a van where parents with small kids laughed and chased the toddlers away from the roadway. The kids were restless, ready for the parade to begin, ready for the candy to fly and ready to hear the sirens, watch the floats and see more smiles.
My trusty hound, Hammer, had made the trip to town with me, but he was more interested in meeting all the new people than he was in the parade.
When Camdenton High School’s Marching Lakers’ drums began thumping back down the road, he started making his own noise. He began barking and fidgeting around just as Laurie’s police truck rolled by signalling the start of the parade.
“Hey, get your dog under control,” Susann Huff half yelled at me from the shotgun seat of the police truck as it passed. I smiled — she was just busting my chops, anyway.
Soon it was raining lightly as the floats, emergency vehicles, politicians and an outhouse on wheels rolled by. Later at the park, someone commented on the irony of an aspiring politician following a mobile porta-potty down O Road.
Only in an election year.
Laurie’ Hillbilly Fair parade is no Rose Bowl Parade, but it’s still fun because it’s so silly — and because it’s ours. Co-Mo Electric Cooperative won top honors at the parade with a group of certifiable hillfolks straight from Ozarks Holler.
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After much hand-wringing and sky watching last week, the rain from tropical depression Ike finally scattering fairgoers Saturday evening at the park.
Before the deluge, however, chainsaw artist Steve Randall wowed those watching him carve a totem pole. Elsewhere across the fairgrounds clowns painted faces and made balloon poodles, Elks offered non-stop bingo games, teens wailed at the karaoke contest and the Chamber’s Buck-A-Ducks floated steadily downstream of the waterwheel.
Friday evening I happened upon the 2008 Hillbilly Fair King and Queen and their two young daughters at one of the carnival games. John Pence and Kris McDavitt, with 5-year old Analyssa Pence and 3-year old Jasmine Evans in tow, stepped up to Mike Swillinger’s balloon pop. The girls, replete with face paint, were too little to see over the table to play. So their parents hoisted them up so they could throw darts at the colorful balloons.
Pence and McDavitt grabbed the girls by the pants to ensure they didn’t fall off the table as they took darts from Swillinger, aimed and fired wildly.
Swillinger, an employee of the carnival operator and a Tampa, Fla. native, let the little ones have more than their share of tries.  A seemingly small gesture, it afforded this young family 15 minutes of fun they wouldn’t have share had they stayed home from the 2008 Laurie Hillbilly Fair.
There’s much work to be done for young families in our community, but at least for three days each September our kids can be kids and their parents can unite behind their smiles.