1952 The rosy Dream

First Prize Class A9

Nature and luck weren’t’ the only saboteurs the city’s float builders had to contend with. In 1952 the Parade was marred by a group threatening to destroy many of the floats, and the South Pas float was on their list. It was not the first time such hooliganism was attempted, but that year the would-be vandals put a letter in the newspaper, revealing their intentions, quite brilliantly, December 1. There was hence plenty of time to move the floats from their normal storage area in Pasadena to a new one in Alhambra. The South Pasadena float was spared, though other floats were damaged, the Helms Bakery float being completely incapacitated.
That year’s entry from South Pasadena was entitled “A Rosy Dream,” featuring a suitcase-toting elephant with rose-colored sunglasses approaching the front door of the White House, while a sheepish donkey walked out the back down. Prescient harbinger of the changing of the guard from Truman to Eisenhower the following year, the float raised a number of the eyebrows stuck to the foreheads of the local Democrats, though most took the float in good humor-the elephant was wearing rose-colored glasses, after all, giving the float some (maybe) unintended meaning. The city again won first prize in its class, though, to be fair, that year it had no competition.

Excerpt from The SouthPas Float Story-2006 Official Souvenir “a History of Doing it Ourselves“ by Jim Taveres