Every year at 7:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve the Riverton Christmas Parade wends it's way down the main street of our little village. In the distant past, the parade consisted of Lion's Club members dressed as Disney characters and wearing bizarre paper mache heads that were reminiscent of Goofy, Donald and Mickey, flinging boiled sweets to the modest crowd that gathered to watch, and an assortment of tractors towing hay-making machines and ploughs, followed along by the old retired fire engine with a cotton-wool-bearded Santa plumped up in the passenger seat. It was unique.
Now-a-days, the parade has biggered!
The aged Lion's hand out balloons now (the children of the town used to dice with death chasing lollies amongst the wheels of the tractors) and the wacky heads stay in their wool shed storage. Clowns bother the crowd and annoy all and sundry, their 'funny' behaviour augmented by a Noddy car that has two golliwogs seated in the back, grinning inanely and waving their white gloved hands as they tootle the length of Palmerston Street. The New Life church has a themed float, as do other churches in the town, festooned-all with children. Santa has a sleigh now and a better beard. Then come the trucks. Many trucks. Diesel trucks burning diesel. Many a lung has convulsed as those behemoths passed. Stock trucks, gravel carrying trucks, lime spreading trucks, urea hauling trucks. Trucks. And tractors with monstrous farm implements behind - reapers, winnowers, rakes and giant ploughs, all scrubbed shiny by proud contractors hauled by glass cabbed, multi wheeled tractors driven by lads I once taught. It's a heart-swelling sight and reeks of Deep South Christmas.
Come on out tonight and see it for yourself.
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