Don't use Smoke Bombs

...of course there was the year we decided to build a small house on Lauren's loyal float building trailer.  We planned on stashing a lovely family of four inside the home and right in front of the judges stand we would stage a heroic rescue...

...with Larrieann driving the, she was the only one who could figure out how to start the tractor that year, I was busy doing something else, tractor pulling the float trailer she crept ahead of the ensuing fire engine as we neared the judges booth set up on the Sentry Markets parking lot.  Of course any good rescue needed to have some wispy smoke involved in it to make the event look more realistic.  At just the precise moment our adult occupants hidden inside our humble abode mounted on our trailer would light the smoke grenades we had acquired from the National Guard. (Note to self:  Don't ever use that kind of smoking devil device again).

The fire fighters following in the engine would see the quaint SMOKEY signal wafting from the building prop down the street and respond in hot (code three with red lights and sirens blazing).  Lurching to a stop in the middle of Highway 199, the air brakes on the engine would set with a loud SWOOSH,  we would pull an attack line off the engine and charge it to life, while two more firefighters donned breathing apparatus, we would enter our play structure and pull our innocent family to safety.   The "Dramatic Rescue" would only take a couple minutes, wooing the dignitary parade judges into awarding I.V. Fire with another years Grand Marshall's Trophy.

Everything went pretty much as to planned until we lite the smoke grenades off.  As the putrid smoke wafted from our simple structure our role players inside the building began coughing in realistic enough sounding agony.  Their uncontrollable gaging could be heard as far as the judges stand located some distance away and the other guests lining the parade route began abandoning their viewing points as to escape the rank smelling smoke bomb fumes.  By the time we reached our delirious actors trapped inside we were able to up the excitement of our "big rescue event" by running back to the fire truck and bringing an oxygen cylinder so we could slap some O2 (oxygen) on our truly expiring actors.

I must admit after the parade was over I felt kind of bad because we made our captain, Mike Melton's, two cute little kid actors cry because the smokey conditions became so realistic.  Within an hour or so our fire victims had recovered almost fully but I don't believe we won the trophy for that years Labor Day Parade demonstration.   Every year afterwards my firefighter gang was a bit more apprehensive when I was developing the next years new parade theme for some reason.