Breathing fire at the Ag Parade

MOSES LAKE — “This is usually a pretty darn good parade.”

So said Bob Ottmar, a 73-year-old member of the Columbia Basin Dutch Oven Club, as he stood in the Friday evening chill near a fire roaring in a half-metal barrel, the smell of chili rising from behind him.

It was early, and people were just beginning to sit in the parking lot of the Surf n’ Slide up for the Ag Parade. Ottmar and his group were there to serve chili, coffee, and cocoa to all those driving in the parade.

But mostly, they are just out, part of what has, for the last two decades, become an annual Moses Lake tradition.

“I’m practicing,” said Art Russell, another member of the Dutch oven club, as he stirred the pot of chili. “And I’m getting pretty good at it!”

Early on, however, the club seemed to have few takers, as those arriving with their trucks, combines, balers and other vehicles decked out in lights, were more interested in getting set up than they were in chili or cocoa.

“I’ve been a builder all my life,” said 52-year-old Robert Johnson as he plugged in the lights of his giant wooden “sailing ship,” Sons of Norway. “I love log furniture, I built a tree house 60 feet up in three big cedar trees for someone.”

Johnson said he built the “boat” for his mother, the proud daughter of Norwegian immigrants, on the back of an old flatbed trailer, and has been taking it to parades across the region — including the Ag Parade — for the last five years.

“I even hooked up a fog machine so that the dragon on front looks like it breathes fire,” he said. “I’ve got to work on the flames, though.”

Ron Tebow, the 62-year-old rancher whose wife Sue started this parade, was busy arranging lights on a hay baler and trying to get giant wrapped boxes to sit just right, so it looked like they were coming out of the end.

“We’ve a baler and a tractor and a passel of kids!” Tebow said.

The parade began as a celebration of agriculture, and was scheduled for early December because “that’s when farmers are done working,” he said. But given the time of year, the Ag Parade has also become Moses Lake’s Christmas Parade, and most of the vehicles were decked out in lights.

Like the engine of Grant County Fire District 5, which was one giant light display, complete with electric candy canes hanging from a basket at the top of the ladder.

“This took 12 of us about two and a half hours to do,” said Fire Capt. Jim Thorn.

Even with all the Christmas lights, Thorn said the truck was still in service and on call for emergencies.

“If we got a call, we’d probably go,” he said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.