I was a Hilex Drip.

Six years  after this picture was taken I was one of the "drips" and three years later I was "lex" the "drop" (or perhaps "Hi-"). 

Why drips and drops? Well, Hilex was a local brand of liquid bleach. 

All years it was the boy scout troop from St. Columba that gave the drips and drops their feet. In the mid-1950s into the Hi- lex entourage came some animals on wheels. In 1956 I piloted what I remember as a squirrel. We were encouraged to be less orderly than our fellow marchers--to entertain the bundled folks along the route. I remember as we crowded into some semblance of order to go up the ramp from the cold of the torch-light parade into the bright lights of the St. Paul Auditorium they told us (through our tiny windows to the outside world) to roll-wild around the auditorium floor. Off course, we did.

Our drips and drops were made of heavy papier mache. "Hi-" and "lex" were heavy enough that we wore football shoulder pads to cushion the straps over our shoulders.  I believe those  drips and drops became too battered through the years and were at some point abandoned for plastic. Our papier-mache gnomes protected us somewhat from the wind and the well-below-zero temperatures. We felt sorry for unprotected marchers such as our musical companions--the St. Francis Drum and Bugle Corps. If St. Paul's Winter Carnival was not cold enough, we also participated every year in the Superior (Wisconsin) Winter Carnival.




(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins