October 2006 - The Garage Sale Queens were in a parade on Friday. It was an interesting (and fun) day. We went to breakfast at Henry's (with tiaras on) like we always do -- some of the regulars asked what we were doing in there on a Friday. (They know we only go Garage Saling on Saturdays.) We told them we were heading to Seguin for our first out-of-Caldwell-County parade. As we were leaving the restaurant, I fell down the steps, but I caught my tiara in the air and saved it!

  We followed the Yahoo map from 183 to I-10 to SH 90 and got to Seguin with no problem. We found our place in line - #13 (on Friday the 13th - we took that as a good sign) and set up the car (I made a new banner for the back last week and it looks MUCH better.) The parade is lined up backwards with #1 at the back (just like in Lockhart). When the parade starts, #1 pulls out and passes all of the other floats - followed by #2 and so on -- that way, all the parade entries get to see the parade as the lower numbers pass them and then as they pass the higher numbers. That's always fun because you are going so slowly at this point, you get to visit with all of the other entries. We ALWAYS get a lot of positive responses from the other floats.

  We were lined up between #12, a nice young engaged couple (Brian and Jessica) with a Floresville VFD truck - and #14, a huge Navy ROTC unit who chanted the entire hour we were waiting for the parade to start (The only chant I remember was: "D-A-D-D-Y - You don't even know that guy. Your daddy -- Yeah, he's your daddy." There was one about "Your Momma" but I couldn't hear it very well because Brian kept blowing the horn on the fire truck).

  Kate and I both needed to use the lady's room, so when a parade officiate drove by in her little two-seater mini-jeep truck-looking thing, Brian asked where we could go to use the restroom. She said we could go to the library up the street. I asked her if we would be disqualified from the judging if we left our post -- so she told us to hop on the back and took us down to the library -- which ended up only being about a block away. We went into the library restroom and the only graffiti on the wall was a drawing someone had done with a black Sharpie. It was a lady's head with a flip hairdo and a crown on her head with the word "queen" written next to it. I kid you not! I told Kate that they were going to think that we drew that! Too bad we hadn’t brought our cameras to the library – that would have been a fun photo for the book.

  We scurried back to our place in line just in time for the judges to drive by. Kate ran up to them and gave them our business cards. I stayed behind sitting on my "gilded thrown" when two ladies approached me from behind. One was from the Seguin radio station and the other was from the Seguin newspaper. They had read our parade application and came to ask us what we are all about. . . said they wanted to do a story on us - and were trying to figure out what our connection to Seguin was. I told them about Kayla Klingingsmith having invited us in June. (She is the reigning [2005-2006] fair princess -- AND -- this year's [2006-2007] rodeo queen contestant -- they have both a fair queen and a rodeo queen -- I think Lockhart did that years ago -- had a Chisholm Trail Round Up Queen AND a Kiwanis Rodeo Queen). [Note: we never heard back from the news people – I guess we weren’t “Seguin-enough” for them. Oh, well.]

  The parade was great fun -- we had lots of positive responses from the crowd (just like from the fellow parade entries). One boy even bowed to us! When we got to the courthouse, the announcer's microphone broke as she was about to announce us. She was frantically looking for a replacement mic and another lady was trying to wave us down to stop. The announcer got a new mic and announced who we were and that we had won the TROPHY for "Best Car/Truck/Vehicle/ Farm Equipment Commercial." We've been in a total of six parades now -- having won ribbons in the previous five - but this is our first trophy. It’s a foot-long 2 x 6 piece of wood (I think it's pecan.) with a 3 x 3 piece of wood (presumably also pecan) glued upright on the right back corner. On the 3 x 3 piece is a pretty brass plate with an etching of a pecan tree and the words "Guadalupe County Fair and Rodeo - Best Car/Truck/Vehicle/Farm Equipment - 2006" (or something like that -- I don't have it in front of me). Glued on the opposite corner is a big squirrel holding an acorn (I think the squirrel is made of resin.) and glued in the center are three lacquered pecans.

  As the parade wound around the streets, the floats turned right into the fairgrounds, but the Floresville VFD truck turned left -- which we followed. We parked on the side of the street and showed them our trophy. Brian was funny because he was sulking that he didn't get any attention -- instead of looking at his pretty fire truck everyone was excitedly pointing to the Queenmobile behind him. So, Brian and Jessica headed back to Floresville and we undecorated the car. We didn't want to drive back through the parade mess so we went to a convenience store to ask for directions. Kate asked the kid behind the counter how to get back to Luling. He said, "I don't know where Luling is." So she asked him how to get to San Marcos. He said, "I don’t know where San Marcos is." So she asked him how to get to I-10. You guessed it, he said, "I don't know where I-10 is." Fortunately, a lady in the store told Kate to take this country road behind the store and it would take us to the 123 Bypass which would take us to 10. Unfortunately, we went the wrong way on 123 and drove about ten miles before we turned around. We got back to Seguin and saw what looked like the intersection we had entered Seguin on -- it wasn't. We turned around again and found our way to I-10. Only it looked different - but then we saw an exit for 90, which we took. But it was not the part of 90 we had traveled on earlier. We ended up in this tiny little town called Kingsbury. It's basically an auto mechanic garage next door to a café next door to a convenience store across the street from a railroad track. The café parking lot was full and there was a red SUV about to pull out. We pulled up next to it and motioned for the driver to roll down his window (yes, we still had our tiara's on -- can't believe you even asked that - Sheesh!). He rolled the window down and I said, "We're lost. Can you tell us how to get back to Luling?" He responded in a lovely accent, "We're from the Netherlands." Kate and I burst out laughing. The lady in the car said, "You look great!" I said, "Thanks. We were just in a parade and we can't find our way home!" We all had a nice laugh and they honked and waved as they left.

  We went into the café and every seat was filled -- all elderly country folk. We walked up to the exhausted-looking waitress and asked her how to get to Luling. She said to just stay on the road we were on. We hadn't driven a half mile past the café and saw a sign that said "Luling 11 miles." We were on our way home . . . . Then we saw the couple from the Netherlands pulled over looking at a map (and we thought WE were lost!)

  We came into Luling from the West but had left Luling from the South so we had made a quarter circle somewhere along the way. But we were almost home. We stopped at Dobb's in Lockhart for chicken and Nancee Dobbs was so pleased to see us. She said she was surprised when we didn't come to her garage sale in July -- we had to explain that Her Majesty Kate was in Europe at the time. Mrs. Dobbs told us that she keeps Ziploc bags full of toiletries in her car that she gives to the homeless -- and she gave us a suggestion we had not thought of. She puts Band-Aids and individual packages of Neosporin in the bags. She said that they are especially grateful for those things because they are always getting cuts and scrapes. She buys them in bulk from some website, but she couldn't remember the name of it. So that's something we are going to look into.