WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Rutland's Annual Halloween Parade

Rutland's Annual Halloween Parade

Rutland, Vermont - October 31, 2009

     It's a spectacle that could only happen on the spookiest night of the year -- a parade has been haunting Rutland every Halloween for half a century.
     "I think it's just that Halloween's so fun," said Cindi Wight, Rutland's recreation director. "It's a fun, eclectic kind of parade and that's something Rutland gets into -- being a little bit different, having fun celebrating the dark side of things."
     Even with the rain and drop in temperatures, organizers expected 15,000 spectators to line the sidewalks of downtown Rutland to watch 50 floats, marching bands and other entries. It's a two-hour event for which many participants spend months preparing. 
     Artist Vicki Vest and her team from the Royal Group have been working on their float since June. Their theme -- King Kong.
     "For Rutland's 50th anniversary I was really trying to find something as big as I could get," Vest said, "and this is probably the biggest thing I could possible build."
     The 13-foot gorilla is made of wire meshing, 20 or 30 rolls of duct tape and shredded packing material -- much of it, recycled. It rides a float with a replica of the top of the Empire State Building and airplanes shattered in King Kong's grasp.
     "The propeller of the plane is the ceiling fan that came out of my kitchen," Vest said. "We knew it would make a really good plane."
     Big wasn't the only goal of the float -- it had to be scary and whimsical and magical, too. And that took hundreds of hours of effort.
     "There's an awful lot of things to incorporate," Vest said. "You have to do your special effects, make sure your electrical is done, make sure wiring is okay, that we've got sound."
     "I just like looking at the floats and seeing how creative everybody else is," said Gabrielle Vest, the artist's daughter who dressed as a military tank that will try to take down the king.
     "Seeing people's reactions when they see the float," she said was her favorite part of the parade. "King Kong's pretty big, so it's pretty cool."
     "It had to be big because this is huge for Rutland. This is a huge parade," Vicki Vest said. "I just wanted to give them something that everybody would step back from and say, 'Wow!'"

Kate Duffy - WCAX News