Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 7, 1992 TAG: 9203070315
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Long
Re: The Washington and Lee University Mock Convention parade you missed Friday morning.
Dear Mike:
Too bad the Roanoke airport was socked in and you got to Lexington too late to do your bit as grand marshal. You probably haven't seen so many strange contraptions since you took a spin in that tank back in '88.
Maybe you heard about Vermont's float with the 7-foot-tall skiing cow. You can still check it out on the porch over at Jennifer Barrows' and Meredith Edwards' house on Nelson Street. Most of it, anyway.
"South Dakota threw two stink bombs on our float," Barrows said. "That's why Bessie's bald on the side. South Dakota also tried to ram our float at the end and I pulled one boy down by his, uh, pants. That's why her stomach is smooshed in."
Those rascals from South Dakota. Guess the guys got a little restless after riding the whole parade with their heads sticking out of a papier mache mountain - Mount Rushmore, get it?
Oh, this wasn't quite what you were expecting? You figured on something more scholarly perhaps? Get with the program, Mike.
"This is Lexington's Mardi Gras." That's what police officer Fred Smith Sr. says anyhow.
You thought this was some quiet little out-of-the-way burg? Not during Mock Convention week. "They hold nothing back," Smith said. "The kids really get into it. The city changes. Last night, we worked a party - 700 people at this party. We had to break it up."
It'll be like that all weekend. Let's just say the Mock Convention reinvigorates the multiparty system.
But back to this parade.
Each state delegation puts together a float. Some of the kids started designing theirs last fall. Hey, they've got traditions to uphold.
Back in '56, the Arkansas delegation put together a munitions factory that shot tennis balls. Unfortunately, the projectiles sailed over the float ahead of the Arkansans and smacked some donkeys - it was a Democratic convention that year, too - in the keister. Spooked 'em right down Main Street. Yee-hah!
1960, that was another famous parade, too. The Florida delegation always throws out oranges, you see. Apparently the Floridians got a little carried away that year and nearly pelted former President Harry Truman on the reviewing stand.
Atlanta pollster Claibourne Darden, the guru of Southern politics, is a W&L grad. About all he remembers from the 1964 Mock Convention was that his North Carolina float featured a working moonshine still. "I guess it worked," he said. "It smelled really bad."
Ah yes, another parade tradition. At least, it used to be. Stories abound of dedicated young scholars falling off floats or passing out Bloody Marys on the street. Rest assured, in these days of stricter alcohol policies, no such thing occurs.
At least not openly.
Officer Smith couldn't help but wonder what the rowdy frontiersmen gathered around the Oklahoma prairie schooner were imbibing. "I'm sure it's iced tea," he said.
Sure.
There's a reason why W&L calls on local middle-school students - but not high-school students - to serve as pages at the convention.
"It's difficult to tell the difference between a high school senior and a college freshman and with all the parties going on, it's easy to tell, `This is an eighth-grader,' " said Mary Jane Mutispaugh, who grew up in Lexington and has been watching mock conventions since she was yea-high.
She's now a government teacher at Parry McClure High School over in Buena Vista. It looked like she had brought almost the whole student body with her Friday morning. In fact, mock convention parade day is traditionally a holiday for schools throughout Lexington, Buena Vista and Rockbridge County.
"The parade is the biggest parade Lexington has," Mutispaugh said. Throngs lined the streets, hung out of second-floor windows, lounged on balconies, some even stood on stepladders for a better view as the parade wound through downtown.
The mock conventioneers give away phenomenal quantities of merchandise from PR-minded companies in the states they represent. Michigan tossed boxes of a new Kellogg's cereal, Texas showered the crowd with yellow roses, Pennsylvania hurled fistfuls of Hershey's kisses. Miss New Jersey herself came down to ride the Garden State's float.
She looked a bit out of place, standing there on a float poking fun at Donald Trump. As you might have guessed, these aren't exactly the kind of floats she's accustomed to riding in Chamber of Commerce parades back home.
Nothing is sacred.
Iowa's float depicted a plane crash in a cornfield. "Buddy Holly and Tom Harkin: Down in Flames in Iowa," the banner read. If you see him, tell the senator not to take it personally. California's float had a Jerry Brown impersonator wearing a Hare Krishna robe.
Utah's float showed a church wedding. Like we said, nothing's sacred. One groom, four brides. The banner: "Donnie, Marie and Polygamy."
Your own Massachusetts float? A full-scale re-creation of the Cheers bar, complete with a bloated Norm. Oh yes, and the sign: "Tsongas is too tsexy for the Mock Convention."
So anyway, that's what you missed while you were sitting around the Charlotte airport for three hours waiting for the fog to lift in Roanoke.
By the way, you may want to stay away from the Mock Convention's last-night rump session at the party shack at Zollman's Pavilion this weekend. Word is, that place will be pretty fogged in, too.
Sincerely yours,
Dwayne Yancey
Keywords:
POLITICS
***CORRECTION***
PUBLISHED CORRECTION RAN OIN MARCH 8, 1992.
BECAUSE OF INCORRECT INFORMATION GIVEN TO THE NEWSPAPER, A CAPTION FOR A PHOTOGRAPH ON A-1 SATURDAY INCORRECTLY IDENTIFIED A MAN PORTRAYING GEORGE WASHINGTON IN LEXINGTON. HE IS BILL SOMMERFIELD.
Memo: CORRECTION