Swan Float, Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena, 1950s

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Swan Float, Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Swan Float, Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-0ECC3E

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The swan is made entirely of dry seed and crushed petal, glued scale by scale onto a chicken-wire frame by volunteers who had spent the previous week in a Pasadena garage arguing about the exact curve of a neck. Every surface on a Rose Parade float had to be organic material, a rule enforced with the seriousness of a building code, so a bird that would wilt by Tuesday afternoon got built anyway for a parade that lasted a few hours on New Year's morning.

Behind it a lettered slogan, cut off mid-word, still manages to promise the float is 'First in Beauty,' which was the whole point of the exercise: a hundred civic clubs competing to prove their float committee had more patience than the next one's. The little pagoda trimmed in yellow chrysanthemum and the small figure posed beside it were built to be glanced at once, from a curb, by people who would remember the swan and forget everything else.

Spectators lean against the rope line the way people do at any parade, sure that this year's flowers are special, unaware that the whole structure would be stripped for its wire frame and forgotten by the following December when the next one had to be better.

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