Reporter’s notebook: Lending LCF Tournament of Roses Assn. a helping hand
Following a recent news story I wrote about the efforts of local service organizations like the La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Assn. to recruit younger members and volunteers in response to aging and attrition, I found myself the recipient of a few suggestions that perhaps there was a way I might help the cause.
“Why don’t you come help down at the float site one of these weekends?” one tournament member asked me during a recent Kiwanis event.
“So what are you going to do about it?” posed a slightly more direct Bob Wallace, now-past president of the Kiwanis Noon Club and float development VP for the tournament, in a similar discussion after the Sept. 22 article came out.
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It looked as if I was going to have to put my money — or more accurately, my hands — where my mouth was. So on the morning of Oct. 1, I threw on some not-so-precious clothes and headed down to La Cañada’s Valley Water Co., the back lot of which serves as the spot where untold numbers of locals have laughed, cursed, spat or bled in the months-long process of getting 55-foot behemoths parade ready.
I wasn’t there for flowers. It’s way too early for those. I was there to learn screening, the process of gluing cut segments of porch screen to the welded shapes that will eventually look like cutesy kids, puppies or stars, but at the moment look more like birdcages on steroids.
Screening is one of the many float-building activities the LCF Tournament of Roses Assn. needs help with in the months leading up to this year’s Jan. 2 Rose Parade. Construction volunteering consists of nothing more than arriving at the 4524 Hampton Road facility and honking or yelling at someone to let you in at the back gate.
My first day, I wasn’t alone. A JPLer named Julia Bell came out of curiosity and was willing to learn screening, too. Float builder Pam Gossoo, who came to La Cañada two years ago after spending one year doing so at Sierra Madre, somehow became our unwitting teacher.
She showed us how to estimate screen lengths and widths and cut the finished edges off to increase its warp and flex so we could bend it across planets, stars and alien eyeballs (this year’s float, “Backyard Rocketeer,” depicts a boy in a homemade spacecraft having a close encounter of the third kind).
How does the screen stay there? Glue. And not Elmer’s or rubber cement — this glue could keep Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie together. It could stop a train from leaving the station, or keep your spouse silent indefinitely. It’s that strong.
“Glue is our friend,” Pam stated the screener’s mantra in a cultish, sing-song voice. What a card.
But she’s right. You have to make friends with the stuff, because you’ll be seeing a lot of it. Like when your gloved fingers stick to your paint brush. Or the piece of pencil rod you use to smooth out screen. Or each other.
After we’d accepted this sticky fact, Julia and I were fairly quick learners. In three hours, when the lunch bell rang and we called it quits for the day, we’d pretty much finished screening the alien. Next up would be stars and planets, both difficult propositions if you consider the properties of metal screen.
Once the screen is laid over the welded shapes, someone “cocoons” the figure, covering it with a textured white surface that will be painted and eventually covered with seeds, powder, flowers or fruit.
I noticed I tended to overthink the screening process, before I learned to have faith that my newfound friend would eventually set and secure everything. Floater Sharlyn French — aka the “screen queen” — reassured me.
“The screeners hide the shapers’ mistakes,” she said. “The cocooners hide the screeners’ mistakes, and the decorators hide everybody’s mistakes.”
That’s when I knew it would all be OK, and that I would be back for more the following weekend.
To learn more about the LCF Tournament of Roses Assn. and its current volunteer opportunities, visit lcftra.org.
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
