Thursday, July 23, 2009

Parades of the Past #6


Scan11881, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

How about this, what a beautiful sight !
Paul

Posted by Buckles at 7/23/2009 05:58:00 AM

3 comments:

jerry digney said...

agree--what a majestic site of all those wonderful animals and wagon...that's amazing...

23 July, 2009 15:25
Richard Reynolds said...

This photo was taken in 1986. We know that because there is no “shade” awning over the giraffe and ’86 was the only year it paraded without the awning. The giraffe was named Too Tall. He came from Dave Hale. After the parade my son Tim and I helped Bobby Gibbs load Too Tall into his truck.

Alas, Too Tall died on the Milwaukee lot just before the 1987 parade. The death was controversial. There were objections that a giraffe would get too stressed by the sun if it did have protection.

Because of Too Tall’s death, the 1987 parade had no giraffe.

For 1988 Hale provided a young female giraffe named Annie, which, for publicity purposes, was called Tall-Tu.

For her parade appearance the shade awning was placed on the wagon. It has been there for all subsequent parades offering a giraffe, including the one earlier this month.

24 July, 2009 12:32
Fred Pfening IIII said...

When I did the broadcast of the 1987 parade with the news anchors from the Milwaukee Fox station, they hesitated to tell me that they had knocked around the idea of headlining the death of Too Tall on the local news as follows: "Too Tall Too Dead To Parade To-day." Good taste prevailed and they didn't do it. They were afraid I'd be offended, which I wasn't, but it was very sad. I remember Hale and Gibbs in tears and the wagon going down the street empty. The powers that be had a lot of discussion about whether or not to include the wagon in the parade, whether to put black crape around the wagon, and so on. Hard to believe that was 22 years ago.

27 July, 2009 19:10

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