The Parade Float
A gravel lot behind a VFW hall in Hammond, Indiana at 4:45 PM on the Friday before the Lake County Fourth of July parade, where a half-finished float built on a flatbed trailer is listing visibly to the left and smells like fresh fiberglass and regret.
Double has volunteered them to finish building the VFW's patriotic parade float by tomorrow morning — a twelve-foot bald eagle with articulated wings powered by a hydraulic system salvaged from a car wash. The eagle currently has one wing, the hydraulics leak pink fluid onto the plywood deck, and the flatbed's hitch pin is held in place by a cotter pin Double borrowed from a guy named Chet at an air show last summer who apparently "owes them one." The VFW commander has promised them a $3,500 cash prize if they win Best Float, but the parade route runs two miles downhill on Lake Street, and the last team that entered a hydraulic float in 2019 sheared a brake line and rolled into a Dairy Queen.
“We already own an eagle with one wing and a hydraulic arm from a car wash. We're closer to done than most people ever start.”
“The last hydraulic float on this route ended up inside a Dairy Queen, and that one had functioning brakes and zero Chet-sourced hardware.”
The eagle's second wing deployed mid-parade and caught a crosswind like a twelve-foot sail, snapping Chet's cotter pin clean off at the top of the Lake Street hill. The unmanned float rolled six blocks downhill trailing pink hydraulic fluid and embedded its beak through the front window of the same Dairy Queen, which had only just finished remodeling from the 2019 incident.
That Dairy Queen has got to relocate — we can't keep doing their marketing for free.
They put a plaque up last time, so at least now it'll be a matching set.