Good Sam, Rose Parade: Meeting of Two Traditions

At about dawn this morning, there was a stirring inside about 800 motorhomes and trailers camped in Pasadena City College parking lots. Generators jumped to life, their sputter ricocheting off the molded sides of the Cobras, Tiogas, Southwinds, Pathfinders and Cruise Airs.

This noisy New Year’s dawning seems destined to disrupt the rest of Rose Parade-goers sleeping out near Hill Avenue and Colorado Boulevard for years to come. The meeting of two all-American traditions--the 500,000-member Good Sam recreational vehicle club and the Rose Parade--has created a third tradition, a New Year’s RV roundup.

‘Really Middle America’

“It’s really middle America,” Sue Bray said of the Good Sam club membership. Executive director of the 20-year-old organization, Bray said the parade is one of two events--the other being the Calgary Stampede--that most appeals to Good Sam members, who have been attending the parade en masse for 10 years. The Pasadena gathering is so popular that tickets ($189 for two people in a rig, with parade grandstand seats $21 extra) sell out by June.

“Belonging to the club makes it easier to see the parade,” said Beverly Edwards, a Durango, Colo., editor of Good Sam’s magazine, Hi-Way Herald. If you’re from the East Coast, making arrangements to view the parade and having a place to park your rig can be daunting, she said. By signing up for the “Samboree” at the college, Good Sam members can roll into town early (most of the rigs arrived last Sunday) and consort with Good-Sammers from 43 states while awaiting the parade.

It’s by far a more desirable option than camping on the curb, said Vera Nipper, 60, of the Moreno Valley, near Riverside. As a teen-ager growing up in Riverside, Nipper said, she used to make the trek to Pasadena on New Year’s Eve with friends to sleep, cold and uncomfortable, on the sidewalk. When she was a young mother with four children, she came to the parade a little better prepared with blankets and snacks, but it still had its discomforts.

Now Nipper and her husband, Bill, are doing the parade “deluxe,” she said, in their Pace Arrow motorhome. When Bill Nipper retires from his rural mail route near Lake Elsinore in two months, the couple plan to make the Pace Arrow home for much of the year.

Carefree at Last

Red-haired, with fresh red lipstick and an easy-going smile, Vera Nipper reflected the sunny mood of many of the Good Samers. It was about to be a new year; they had prime seats for the parade (the club bought a block of tickets in the stands); they were retired or soon-to-be; and they were mobile and free of family responsibilities--in many cases for the first time.

“Now we’re living,” Nipper said.

While awaiting the big morning, the Good Samers encamped in Pasadena attended classes that would teach them to keep their rigs in shape for the next adventure. Care and keeping of an RV CB antenna, making the most of a rig’s microwave/convection oven, RV clinics and understanding propane gas were just some of the offerings.

There were other entertainment options: aerobics to big band music, a sneak float preview, CPR instruction and a ladies’ tea with the 1987 Rose Queen and her court.

Most of the group, whose average age is 62, would see in the new year by dancing in the campus auditorium.

But just after midnight, senior citizens would flood out onto Colorado Boulevard to join in the rowdy street celebration before retiring to their rigs--maybe for a game of hearts before the generators were squelched for the night.

“That (the street) is where the fun is,” said Horace Turner, 74, of Paradise, a small town about 100 miles north of Sacramento. Turner, a former maintenance mechanic from Vernon, wore a jacket covered with patches from past Good Sam gatherings.

Donald and Helen Strickland of Sun City, Ariz. were looking forward to celebrating the New Year by morning light. “We have nice, high seats for the parade,” said Helen Strickland, 73.

In each of the college’s parking lots, there were rows of motorhomes bedecked with ladders, bike carriers, antennas and other gee-gaws of mobile civilization.

You could tell the live-ins by the wilting Christmas trees on the dashboards. Many displayed carved wooden signs as if to say this is home . . . signs such as “Ted and June Jones, Alburg, Utah” and “The Turners, Georgia.”

From the parking lot could be seen the empty parade bleachers against a warm, cottony sky, with the mountains so clear in the distance that individual boulders were distinct.

While Rose Parade officials rushed about with walkie-talkies and workmen assembled still more seats, the Good Sammers were at ease. It was one of the perks of their hard-won retirement--this year the Rose Parade was going to come to them.