SEQUIM – The mission: Keep the Ford station wagon cool.
Joe Borden, chairman and mechanic for the Sequim Irrigation Festival, accepted that as he and the Irrigation royalty drove along U.S. Highway 101 one day last month.
They were on the way home from the Issaquah Salmon Days Parade, in which Irrigation Festival queen Janaye Birkland and her court had ridden and waved.
Birkland and princesses Carolina Garcia, Amanda Cerutti and Rebekah Harasick had to preside from a makeshift float: a platform on Borden’s pickup truck.
The Irrigation Festival’s elaborate “112 Years and Still Rockin'” float burned up in a roadside fire at Dosewallips State Park on Sept. 8. The float, royalty and chaperones were coming back from the Hoquiam Loggers Playday parade.
No one was hurt in the blaze, which was probably caused by an electrical short, according to Chief Bob Herbst of Jefferson County Fire District No. 4 (Brinnon).
That float was the shell of a 1972 Chevrolet Malibu plus some ’57 Chevy parts.
