Perfecting the parade in Bucksport

BUCKSPORT -- Dorothy Sherman woke up this morning with one question on her mind: What can she do to make next Thanksgiving's parade in Bucksport better than the one yesterday?

It's been an annual post-Turkey Day tradition with her for 33 years, starting off a yearlong effort to raise money, organize marchers and riders and get as many of the community off U.S. 701 between Conway and the Georgetown County line as possible involved in an event that started with a few friends looking for something better to do.

"We were just sitting in my living room saying there's got to be something we can do [before eating the Thanksgiving turkey] than just sitting around and waiting on dinner," she said minutes before Thursday's parade.

The first year, she recalled, there were a few cars and riders. Then some in the community got together with wire and tinfoil to put together a float.

"[The kids] came from every direction just to get on the float," she said.

Now they're already in the small park around the James Frazier Community Center with their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles by the time the floats, cars, motorcycles, horses and marchers line up in the circular driveway to follow a four-mile route with riders waving and throwing candy to onlookers.

It may not be Manhattan and the Macy's parade, but New Yorkers don't get the chance to see a pickup outfitted with members of the Diva Sister Social Club, either.

They also don't have a fresh-cooked whole pig along Broadway from which everyone is invited to pick or the cool soft drinks, all free to all comers.

It's that down-home, home-done quality of the Bucksport parade that Lawrence Bellamy said keeps him coming back.

"This is home to me," said Freddy Moore of Charlotte, N.C., who added that he prefers the Bucksport parade and the chance to visit with old friends to the parade put on by the Queen City.

Denise Holmes of Georgetown brought six nieces and nephews along on her 10th Bucksport parade viewing.

"It's a good outing," she said, a testament to the vision of the founders in Sherman's living room 33 years ago.

This year's version was led by a patrol car from the Horry County Police Department. Behind it were marchers and flag bearers from the Marine Corps Junior ROTC from Carvers Bay High School and the Trailblazers Pathfinders Club at Bethel Seventh Day Adventist Church. Two other groups of marchers, Boy Scouts and Knights of Columbus, were followed by dozens of vehicles chauffeuring dignitaries from the Diva Sisters to Dennis and Laura Grissett, grand marshals. Churches, nightclubs, community organizations, Mary Kay cosmetics and Rhues Mortuary in Conway all had units in the parade.

Interspersed among the vehicles were three floats, the last bearing Santa of course, a large group of motorcyclists, a garbage collection truck from Horry County Solid Waste and a herd of Tennessee Walking horses that bore their riders along the streets as smoothly as a cold knife gathering soft butter for a roll to complement a well-roasted turkey leg.

It's never rained on Bucksport's parade, Sherman said. And she never envisioned the event would become what it has.

"But you know what?" she added. "When God has his hand in it, you can't expect it to be any other way."