a little bit of progress

So this year, the theme for the Citrus Fiesta's Parade of Oranges (there's always a theme) is "the Railroad in South Texas." I'm thinking of building a two-trailer float, with the first part being a replica of a steam engine and the second an old-timey open-air railroad car carrying a single, absurdly large, grapefruit. The second car is based on a real photo, hand colored postcard from around the turn of the twentieth century. If we do this, the huge grapefruit would be made out of papier mache, painted yellow and dusted with dried citrus rinds. The name of the railroad company will be stenciled on the matte black sides and filled in with prickly pear cactus squeezed through a french fry cutter.


I haven't given much thought to the name of our train, but the Mission Chamber of Commerce, which covers Mission and the very small adjacent towns, has this to say about one part of town called Alton: "The City of Alton was established as a stop on the San Benito and Rio Grande Valley Railroad around 1910. It was named after the Alton Railroad, whose officials were from Alton, Illinois. Alton is an agricultural area surrounded by numerous citrus orchards, mainly grapefruit plantations. The city was incorporated in 1978 and is located right next door to the larger city of Mission on Highway 107. Alton's population has been growing steadily and is currently 3,361. Students attend Mission Consolidated Independent School District schools."

So maybe we're the San Benito and Rio Grande Valley Railroad or maybe we're the Alton Railroad. I like the former, since my sister, Martha, works for the city of San Benito. But Alton sounds good too.

The Alton railroad may have a slight lead, since there's a really cool photo story to accompany the northern version of the railroad:
In 1900 the Chicago & Alton Railroad Train co. , commissioned Lawrence with the manufacture of the largest camera ever made and the largest photo ever shot in order to promote a new train. The whole attempt costed 5.000 $, a really extreme sum for that period, since it was equivalent to the construction cost of a huge house. The enormous print was hosted in the international salon of Paris and attracted great interest. The promotional campaign costed significantly less than it would have costed if the actual train had been sent. The attempt had such a response that a Paris representative was sent to verify that the camera was actually ever made.
Plus, their trains looked cool, and there's that Chicago connection:




One problem is I haven't read the parade rules this year and don't know if an articulated (i.e., two part) float will be granted a permit. Another problem is that this will double our work. Danny and I went to the Citrus Fiesta office to get a permit and read the rules, but it was closed today, so I'll have to wait until Monday to find out if this idea is going anywhere.

The steam engine will be included either way, and the smoke will be either dry ice or a cheap disco smoke machine.

I want to keep it simple, but Danny wants to make the wheels go around and maybe include a few other fancy tricks. I tried to tell him about relational aesthetics today, but he refused to listen.

The pinata lady who, last year, made life-sized pinatas of me and Jane, agreed today to make 5-9 custom pinatas of bandits to sit on the steam engine.
Danny and I went to the Hidalgo County Historical Museum to try to find the photo both of us remember (but which neither of us can find) of about 5-9 Mexican bandidos posing on a captured steam locomotive captured during the Mexican Revolution. I've spent many hours looking for the photo on line with no luck.

I got contact info for the Senior Curator ( Barbara) and the Information Technology Specialist (Esteban) at the museum and will set up an appointment with them to try to find the image to bring to the pinata shop to make life-sized custom pinatas to put on the train. I did get a few photos of old steam engines and trains in the Valley in the late 1800's.


Scale is always an issue.

A few of the photos of trains that actually ran in South Texas were in the Hidalgo County museum and a couple of those had people in the images. That will help with setting the scale.

We already have one large trailer (22 feet, 2 1/2 inches long and 9 feet 6 inches wide), borrowed from the Mission chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. It's the same trailer we used last year to build the Conjunto float. Danny and I then went across the street to Doyt's and found the base of an old travel trailer that will be the second float -- the railroad car with the giant grapefruit -- if we are allowed to use it. We unloaded the old metal and wood that was on it (with the help of Doyt and his grandson Judd), aired up the old tires, and brought it back to Danny's shop. We then stripped it's rotting wood foundation and decided it looked pretty good. We're going to cut off the skid plates and turn the axles upside down to make it a little bit higher and start building a new platform for it.



Doyt's old jackass, who I met a year ago, and included in a country and western song I'm writing with Jane, and who I mistakenly thought was a female and a mule and named Sarah, watched and was a little upset that we were shaking up his yard. After all, it's basically like we removed the couch from his living room without asking permission before hand. He's lived in this pasture for 19 years. (And he's not a female, and not a mule, and didn't have a husband, and his name is Curly.)


Danny remembered that he's got an authentic railroad lantern and a bunch of kerosene lamps. We will probably use all that.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a parade workday for me, but I have a legal client who needs me to do a significant amount of work, so Danny's on his own tomorrow. He's going to remove the skids and start laying the platform on the old trailer.