BETHEL – People of all ages turned out in force for Saturday’s Mollyockett Day Festival parade, including three garden gnomes on one float who garnered much laughter while hanging out under a giant toadstool.
Sporting bushy white beards and red cone hats, the faces of Joe Bailey, Wendy Nutting-Bailey and Russell Delallo could barely be seen. And although they stood still the whole way up Main Street, around Bethel Common and down Church Street, they gave the illusion of being short people. Stuffed jeans and shoes spread out from their waists atop the fake grass float, which was lined with a white picket fence. Trailing behind it were a large windmill and a fancy copper sculpture, which was actually a spinning lawn sprinkler.
“It took us 2 days to put it together, but we thought about it a lot,” Joe Bailey said prior to the parade’s 11 a.m. start.
Joe Bailey said he’s been a Mollyockett Day float participant since he was a little boy in 1960, when the festival began. It commemorates Molly Ockett, a Pequawket Indian who lived among and befriended Western Maine’s early settlers from the mid-1700s to early 1800s.
The parade’s theme was “Yard Sale,” and many of the floats matched it perfectly, including one containing an rusty old jalopy partially buried by undergrowth.
People on most floats tossed candy to people and children, but the Greenwood Spartans Regional Youth Football players, some wearing helmets, threw bottles of Poland Spring water.
Bethel police Chief Alan Carr said Saturday’s turnout was “the biggest crowd ever,” and the parade had the “most creative floats” he’d seen yet.
Dick Brume of Greenwood agreed.
“For a small town like this, it was a tremendous parade,” he said.
Sporting a large pink flamingo atop his head and looking out through pink flamingo sunglasses, Brume attracted plenty of attention, both participating in the parade with the Littlefield Beach float and chatting it up with people lining the street.
“I’ve been to bigger towns that had less in a parade, but at least this one had a band,” he said of the Mahoosuc Community Band, which performed atop a trailer being pulled along the street.
Regarding the flashy headgear, Brume, 68, said, “It’s a chick magnet. I’ve had more women want to take my picture, so I think I’m going to wear it forever.”
After the parade, which included firetrucks and antique and classic cars, horses and one tiny motorcycle, people headed up Main Street in droves, flocking along with Brume to the Common.
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