Looking for some good old-fashioned entertainment to help get you in a festive holiday mood? Check out the Alert Christmas Parade, set to kick off at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14.
That’s right, A-lert, the community that’s just over the Franklin/Vance County line beyond Epsom.
Larry Ayscue is one of this year’s parade organizers, but he also is credited with being the original organizer of that first parade 34 years ago.
“I would love to get the word out, just come and see it – check it out and see what you think of it,” he said on WIZS TownTalk. He wants to promote participation in the parade, as well as inviting spectators to come out and enjoy the eclectic variety of entries.
Unlike Christmas parades that are held inside town or city limits, Alert’s parade isn’t fettered by rules and regulations.
“Alert is not a town,” Ayscue said. “I always tell people, don’t come expecting a town – it’s just a little community.”
No forms to fill out, no official lineup to follow translates into good, old-fashioned fun, with “a lot of hollering, wavin’ and carrying on,” he said.
“We’ve had people to tell us that they’d rather be in that parade than any other one they’ve ever been in,” he added. “It’s just a lot of fun.”
Melanie Bobbitt helps Ayscue and his wife, Nancy, out and maintains a Facebook page complete with photos from previous parades and other information to promote the event, which had a pretty humble beginning.
“It started out as a kind of a joke,” Ayscue said, when he and others were putting in tobacco. It was summertime hot, and Ayscue said he made a comment that Alert ought to have a Christmas parade, any reason to think about cooler weather. Later on in the year came the questions: Well, are we going to have a parade? Are we? Ayscue checked with the Franklin County Sheriff’s office and “everybody gave me the ok.”
And what was supposed to be a one-shot deal has become a tradition like no other. Ayscue explained that a lot of older folks simply weren’t able to get out and go to town to watch parades, so the parade came to them.
Over the years, there have been some pretty interesting entries in addition to the usual firetrucks, church floats and children dressed up in Christmas costumes.
Ayscue has fond memories of one particular entry in the parade a few years ago. “It was the prettiest little thing,” he said, describing a goat hooked to a cart, both decorated up for the occasion.
“Anyone who has anything they’d love to put in the parade,” he said, should just show up by 1 p.m. at the intersection of Alert and Jordan School roads. The parade route is about 1.5 miles, ending at G.F. Ball Road.
For more information, contact Bobbitt at 919-497-6081, Nancy Ayscue at 252.458.1600 or Larry Ayscue at 252.343.9275.
“I believe you would thoroughly enjoy it if you come out,” Ayscue said.
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