Carson Is Ready to Lead the Parade : Volunteers Touch Up the Float That Will Be First in Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses

“Onion seeds,” said 16-year-old Cindy Leyva of Montebello, with friend Gaby Ibarra at her side. “We’ve been doing onion seeds. Four to five hours of onion seeds. It’s fun.”

Nearby, Paul and Phyllis Schriger from Englewood, N.J., were doing paprika. “It’s not as easy as it seems,” Phyllis said, as dark red dust drifted to the floor.

With such unlikely materials, so goes the fabrication of the lead float in this year’s 100th Tournament of Roses parade.

The honor of being first this year went to Carson, whose float is an American Standard 4-4-0 steam locomotive, one of the wood-burning iron horses that brought Easterners across the continent to Pasadena 100 years ago.

About 100 volunteers, mostly from Carson, are braving chilly weather this week in Pasadena, working two shifts a day to put on finishing touches. The Carson float was in a cavernous tent that housed a dozen other parade entries in various states of construction.

Parade Requirements

According to the rules of the parade, all float surfaces must be made of some sort of vegetable matter. Volunteers were coating everything in sight with seaweed, lima beans, chrysanthemums, carnations, roses, daisies and straw flowers, among other things.

The onion-seed workers were taking a break from pasting the tiny kernels onto the locomotive’s undercarriage.

“You put the glue on and throw them up,” explained Cindy. Gaby, 14, giggled at the description. The floor was covered with onion seeds that hadn’t stuck.

Nearby, the Schrigers were busy dusting bright red paprika onto the wheels.

“It is hard to get the paprika even,” sighed Phyllis.

This is the first year that the Schrigers, in town to visit their son, a doctor at UCLA, have worked on a Tournament of Roses float.

“We have always wanted to do this,” Phyllis said.

“Since I was a little boy,” said Paul.

Dennis Charles Midyett of West Covina has been working on Rose parade floats since he was a little boy.

Started Own Business

Last year, after years of working for other float designers and fabricators, he and his wife, Debbie, went into business for themselves as DC Arts. Carson was their first customer; the float featured the Greek sea god Poseidon.

Out of loyalty, the Midyetts went back to the city with the locomotive design that they considered their best shot as lead float.

“We had no way of knowing up front” that it would win the starting position, Midyett said.

Nevertheless, they were hopeful because of the parade’s emphasis on a historical perspective this year--what with it being the 100th anniversary of the event.

The Carson Rose Float Assn. took a look at the locomotive design and signed DC Arts to an $80,000 contract.

Carson Was Lucky

When parade officials did pick the locomotive to be the lead, Carson residents congratulated themselves on their good fortune. “We were just dumb and lucky,” said Gary Miller, the organization’s first vice chairman and a 13-year veteran of Carson’s float building.

Since then, civic enthusiasm has been building.

Unlike some other floats, all the decorations for Carson’s are being put on by volunteers.

About 60 of them, typically arriving in small groups of friends, staff the day shift. Another 30 work into the night. During the day, the mix is mainly retirees and students. Adults with jobs are more likely to come after work.

Local businesses are helping out. Yoplait is sending four cases of yogurt a day to feed the volunteers. Puritan Bakery sends bread. Farmer Bros. supplies hot chocolate and coffee. Nissan, Arco, Shell, Watson Land Co., small businesses and local banks are chipping in to pay for two meals a day for volunteers.

By the time they are finished, the volunteers will have used 800 pounds of glue, 200 pounds of onion seeds “and probably 2 billion poppy seeds,” said Midyett. “The volunteers are amazing.”

And then the float, resplendent in its floral colors, with a complement of Carson’s elected officials and float organizers on board, will roll 5 1/2 miles along the streets of Pasadena--and into the televisions of America--for its brief moment of glory.

It won’t take long for the flowers and other vegetation to show age.

After the parade, “it will start looking pretty bad in about four days,” said Midyett.

Indeed, truth be known, the process has started already.

A few of the lima beans, which are used to highlight edges, absorbed moisture during recent rains and cracked their skins. Midyett frets that they might sprout if they get wet.

Torrance is the only other South Bay city with a float, one that features Father Time. It’s the second-to-last float in the parade. Betty Holland, president of the Torrance Rose Float Assn., insisted with good humor that she doesn’t envy Carson’s lead position.

“They may be the lead float, but we are the best float.”