Holiday Time

Today in Carthage was our "Holiday Parade", for years it was the "CHRISTMAS PARADE" the Village Board of Carthage changed the name some years back to "Holiday Parade" to be "politically correct", for a few years petitions were started and signed, presented to the Board, people attended meetings, wrote newspaper articles and even as popular as it was to change the name to "Christmas" instead of "Holiday" they couldn't do it!!! It was a nice parade no matter what you call it and there were several local "Churches" with floats, bands from the High School and the Catholic School.

It was nice as our float "Sign" said "Jesus was the Joy of the Season", thankfully they did not have restrictions on signs with the word "Jesus" printed or written on them, BUT I did not see any crosses because I think there was someone from the A.C.L.U. there looking for them.

As with any parade there was a lot of candy, gum, suckers, thrown from the floats, fire trucks, car dealerships and business floats in the parade, I am glad I am big because I managed to get my 8 pieces of bubble gum by snatching it out of the air above the heads of the little buggers trying to hog it all for themselves!!!

The last float was "Santa" which all the little "urchins" were waiting for and he was well received by the "young-uns"!!!

Our day started yesterday as we spend Friday sitting up the church and dining room and getting craft tables, knitted goods, Bake Sale, and things ready for this morning.

We got to church at 6:30AM, made a pot of good strong "NAVY COFFEE" and Dan and I started cooking sausage and making urns of coffee for the morning.

This tarp was set up for a reason which you will soon read about!









Dan and I finished cooking all the breakfast sausage and started cooking Pancakes!! We use the cheap pancake mix and then doctor it up with fresh whole milk, eggs, touch of this, dab of that and Of course we had to sample a sausage wrapped in a pancake dipped in fresh New York State Maple Syrup and savored with some Navy Coffee!! YES!! they were delicious!!!! "YES" those are bags under my eyes!!!!!












Anna Mae, Marty and Ginny, Marty just got done working a 11PM to 7 AM shift at the paper mill and showed up to start another shift helping his honey cook homemade home fries and cooking scrambled eggs!!

Above Anna Mae, Ginny and Sandy getting the Homemade "Home Fries" and "Scrambled Eggs" ready and sitting up the coffee table!

Some of our people above enjoying Orange Juice, Coffee, Pancakes, Homefries, Eggs and Pancakes at our "All you can eat" breakfast for $6.00 and we went thru lots of pancakes and sausage, and the pictures on the table are real homemade Maple Syrup, right now it is about $45.00 a gallon, thankfully one of our long time church members once again donated it, *(Thanks Richard)!!!

At 11:00 a.m. our U.C.C. church youth group with some youths from our neighbor Baptist Church decided to try "Fried Dough" this year as we get a large crowd on our corner as this is where the parade turns off the main street down a side street to disband. The tent served several purposes....1st, it was a little rainy and it kept the kids and youth leaders dry, 2nd, with the amount of small children running and racing around and people coming into church it cut down on the chance of someone bumping into the boiling hot grease the fired dough was cooked in, there was 2 long lines waiting for the treat and of course I had to taste test it and it was delicious covered in powdered sugar and hot!!!

We had a back up team inside cooking more fried dough, Carmen and her son Michael being watched by Penny cook more of the delicious fried dough!!!

There was no "Fat" or "Calories" in our fried dough because it was cooked in "CRISCO!!!

This is the corner view of United Community Church, a lot of these people came to visit us for breakfast this morning and then got their position to view the "Parade"!!!

This is our "Float" in the Christmas Parade, we were lucky today as it was a very light rain and the temps were not bad!!! I hope I don't get in trouble for saying "Christmas" Parade instead of Holiday Parade!!!

Our Minister and "Angles" singing as they pass by the church!!!

It was a long day, hard work, a lot of fun, and at about 2PM we finally got all the food put away, dishes washed, trash picked up, dishes put away and ..........

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Marty just didn't get enuff work after working all night and cooking eggs and homefries this morning, so he finished his second shift about 1PM this afternoon making sure the floors were clean for church tomorrow morning!!!!!

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Make sure you remember our Armed Forces and those

men and women serving who won't be home for "Turkey Day"

this year and will not be with their families!!!