What is the Best Thing to Be in a Billings Parade?

Today's topic is: What is the best thing to be in a parade? I have walked the entire parade route a couple of times in my history so I will say that whatever I am in the next parade, it won't involve walking.

You can spend your time and energy building a float. But if you don't plan on using that same float every year, it's kind of a waste of time and effort. There's also the issue of where are you going to store it for the next 364 days. That's a problem.

Being in a group of similar cars is fun. So you can drive the parade route with a bunch of other Mustangs, Corvettes, or even the little "minis" that the Shriners used to drive.

And parades aren't as much fun now that the city of Billings won't allow us to throw candy at kids. I understand that it's an insurance issue, but I still don't like it.

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But my favorite parade was thirty years ago when we did our free concerts. Our parent company paid the bill for acts like Toby Keith and Lorrie Morgan to play at Metrapark. And because we paid the bill, we had all of the tickets to giveaway. All 10,000 tickets.

And one year we were given four-wheelers to ride up and down the parade route giving concert tickets to whoever we saw fit to win. Some won because they made signs. And some won because they had cute kids. My formula was just that scientific.

And by doing this some folks who never could have afforded good tickets, got some.