Posted on 07/02/2002 11:40:53 AM PDT by chance33_98
Real men design, build parade floats
Monday July 01, 2002, 08:20:07 PM
Carl's Jr. is wrong.
Their latest ads talk about how real men do not eat 49-cent hamburgers, but guys who design floats do.
I beg your pardon. Jared and Joel Sweeney design floats, eat $2 hamburgers and in addition, will tackle questions about their masculinity.
July is not the time to be talking about the Rose Parade. That's about 182 days away. A stinking parade is the last thing we want to think about.
Except, Bakersfield has two semi-wild and creative brothers who were chosen to design the float for the city of Downey. Downey's float is one of 54 in the parade.
The Sweeneys' resumes do not necessarily point to float building. Joel, 31, works at Barnes & Noble as the resident "he-knows-where-every-book-in- the-store-is" guy.
Jared, 30, cleans model homes for a living. The boys moved to Bakersfield 10 years ago and share expenses and a house in east Bakersfield with their mother, Sanya, who works as the administrative assistant at First Christian Church.
Sanya had called originally. She was proud. How many mothers have two boys selected to design a float? It's as rare as coming up with a good hamburger.
"Jared used to sit in church and draw pictures when he was 4 and people would fight over the drawings," Sanya said.
Joel, rail thin now, describes himself as the shy, fat kid growing up who loved to read and look at the funnies. He created a comic strip, Captain Cosmos, in high school and won third place in the state in college for an editorial cartoon.
Interest in art and comics aside, who even knows anybody in Downey? The Sweeneys did. Their 28-year-old sister, Jody, was dating Kelley Roberts, who has built the last 12 floats for Downey.
On a visit to Bakersfield, Roberts saw some of Jared's artwork.
"You ought to submit a drawing for the next float," Roberts said.
Float? Joel and Jared had slept through every Rose Parade for the last 20 years. They had no idea how to draw a float, but with a three-day deadline and gallons of coffee, they pulled together three drawings.
Their designs were three of 40 entered. They won. The Sweeneys were in the float business.
The Rose Parade's theme this year is "Children's Dreams, Wishes and Imagination." The Sweeneys' entry, called "Midnight Rescue," includes a girl in the throes of a nightmare trying to rescue her teddy bear in spite of a shark circling and an octopus wrapping its tentacles around her bed.
Using steel, aluminum screen, foam, and then dried materials like flaxseed, onion seeds, poppy seeds, seaweed, tea leaves, orchids, tulips and roses, the float will be 55 feet long, 18 feet wide and no more than 15 feet high so it can navigate the overpasses and power lines along its 5 mph journey from Downey to Pasadena the night before.
Is this the time for the Sweeneys to quit their day jobs? The answer is no. The Sweeneys aren't getting paid. In order to make money designing floats -- each of which cost at least $65,000 -- it's necessary to nail down one of the paying jobs with companies like Honda, Kodak, IHOP or the Wright Brothers' Family Foundation.
"We just want to hear our name read on TV to more than 250 million people," Joel said.
They'd like to get the word out. Get noticed, maybe win an award for their float. Then, maybe one day, childhood fantasies and a love of art might pay off.
People are fond of saying things happen for a reason. Maybe the float makes sense. Even though the Sweeneys were gypsies growing up, they were born in Downey. Building a float is like taking a slow ride home.
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