York Halloween Parade

Sunday, 31 October 2004

This page updated 02 November 2004 16:29

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York's annual Halloween Parade is always a fun occasion to "show the flag" for Sea Scouting and wave to the crowds.  It's our "fifteen seconds of fame", and we play it to the hilt.  This year our trusty flat-fender CJ-2A Jeep NELLYBELLE was decked out not only with the Ship's flag, but with the Bermuda courtesy flag as well, in honor of this past summer's long cruise.  Riding shotgun was the Ship's newest mate, Ben Feril.  Looking mighty fine in their working blues were Mike and Nate.

Although there seemed to be some residual confusion among the native population (Go Army! and such), we did get a lot of enthusiastic applause.  Some year we'll have to return Nelly to her original color of battleship gray.

Note:  the weekend was a double-header for us.  Saturday, the day before the parade, we went to Manchester, MD to the Chesaepeake Flotilla Halloween Party hosted by Ship 320.  Carl won the "funniest costume" contest with his Ghostbusters impersonation.  The hayride and haunted house were fun.  We slept over, had a great breakfast, then returned to York just in time for the parade.  Fun times!

We had a much better parade position this year.  Last year we were behind a float that exhausted it's generator fumes directly on top of us.  This year we were behind a classic 1963 Chevy Impala.  Note:  the Chevy was really looking for a space to lay rubber and let the horses under the hood do their thing.