Organizers: Pioneer Days Parade will be biggest ever

Posted by Mark Chapman on September 2nd, 2010 at 4:00 am,
with photos by courtesy Pioneer Days Committee

The John Deere trac­tors will be back as one of over 90 parade entries in what promises to be the largest Engle­wood Pio­neer Days Parade and Fes­ti­val in many years.

Sub­mit­ted by Pio­neer Days Committee

With the entries all in, the num­bers indi­cate this will be the biggest Pio­neer Days parade and park par­ties ever. West Dear­born Street will be hop­ping  all day Mon­day with the clos­ing events of the 54th annual cel­e­bra­tion of Englewood’s pioneers.

More than 90 entries are sched­uled for the parade, some old favorites – the John Deere trac­tors, the Shrine Clowns – and some new.

Many com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions have assem­bled floats that they hope will be prize win­ners for the “Going Green” theme. The Lemon Bay/Myakka Trail Scenic High­way promises an entry that com­bines “Sesame Street” with recy­cling efforts. Watch for But­ter­flies to teach about pre­serv­ing our com­mu­nity resources in “Meta­mor­pho­sis” a com­bined effort of Arts Alliance of Lemon Bay and the Engle­wood Com­mu­nity Rede­vel­op­ment Area. The Olde Engle­wood Vil­lage Home­own­ers Asso­ci­a­tion promises a mobile solar-powered liv­ing room. The Lemon Bay High School is turn­ing Oz-Green with a float fea­tur­ing singers and per­form­ers. Grace Com­mu­nity Church is show­ing how you can cre­ate a beau­ti­ful float com­pletely with a com­bi­na­tion of recy­clable, recy­cled and reused materials.

James Ullery and Chris Phelps engage in some strate­gic plan­ning before decid­ing on ven­dor placement.

Join­ing the parade at Gar­rett Park will be “Kids On Bikes” as Engle­wood chil­dren show off their green-decorated bikes and rid­ing skills.

Nine tro­phies will be awarded, and the tro­phies are green too —  and com­pletely unlike any tro­phy you’ve ever seen before. Award cer­e­monies are sched­uled to be held at Pio­neer Park at 2:45 p.m. The parade will begin at 10 a.m.

With more than 100 ven­dors in the two parks, there’s going to be plenty to do dur­ing the day. A unique selec­tion of food ven­dors will allow selec­tions from crepes for break­fast to a wide choice of lunch treats to cold, frosty treats in the after­noon. There will be crafts, green infor­ma­tion and a chance to meet com­mu­nity groups and orga­ni­za­tions that know how to have a good time.

Kids can have fun in both parks with bounce houses, pony rides, race cars, bal­loons, and maybe even a pro­fes­sional bat­ting cage.The kids can also enter the water­melon and/or pie-eating con­tests to be held at Gar­rett Park. Did Dad for­get to shave? Enter the Beard Contest!

Dis­trib­ut­ing more than 100 ven­dors across two parks calls for some visual help. The com­mit­tee uses dif­fer­ent types of pins for dif­fer­ent ven­dors, sized to fit a to-scale map. Tags iden­tify the spe­cific ven­dor at a location.

Athough “Stoney” can’t come to Pio­neer Days this year, the Stone Crabs are send­ing  their own pitch­ing booth for kids com­ing to the park par­ties. This is a chance to see just how fast you can throw that ball and match your­self against the professionals.

It takes knowl­edge­able peo­ple to run a pitch­ing booth and to give you clues about how you can improve. The Lemon Bay Base­ball Boost­ers are tak­ing on the job. Both stu­dents and advis­ers will be present to help out at the booth.

The pitch­ing booth will be located at Pio­neer Park and will open after the parade. Adults and young peo­ple are wel­come to try out their arms.

There will be musi­cal enter­tain­ment in both parks through­out the day. Wor­ried about get­ting from one park to another? Hop a ride in the pedi­cab, which will person-power you in com­fort up or down the street.

Look­ing for some­thing in par­tic­u­lar? Need to know when your favorite band is play­ing? Check at the Ranger/Information booths in both parks and, fol­low­ing the parade, on Dear­born St. Sou­venirs of Pio­neer Days as well as the unique com­mem­o­ra­tive mug, which gets a dis­count on bev­er­ages at par­tic­i­pat­ing Dear­born St. loca­tions, will also be avail­able at the infor­ma­tion booths.

Full infor­ma­tion and sched­ule is avail­able at http://www.englewoodpioneerdays.com

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2 responses to “Organizers: Pioneer Days Parade will be biggest ever”

1. Old Fart

   9 / 2 / 2010
   1:04 pm

   You’re too mod­est Mark, you won’t blow your own horn, so I’ll blow it for you. In this case it makes an “AAOOGA” sound. “The Engle­wood Edge” will have a float in the parade. Well, sort of. Nancy Chap­man will be rid­ing in the back of “Old Lizzie” My 1927 Model T Ford.
   We decided it would be a fit­ting entry for a Green” parade. You can’t get much more “recy­cled” than an 83 year old car that gets 25 MPG with the co-owner of a “paper­less” news paper in it.
   News paper peo­ple don’t get hol­i­days off, some­body has to doc­u­ment this parade for the paper, that’s going to be Mark’s job.
   DJH
2. Gail Eason

   9 / 6 / 2010
   8:10 am

   Thanks for all the Pio­neer Days infor­ma­tion and great photos

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