Unofficial mayor of Tirzah starts holiday parade

05.12.09

There are fat guys on trailers pulled by four-wheelers and hollow-cheeked guys on motorcycles. There's even a Miss Teen Tirzah for six years who had to change her name to Ms. Tirzah because she turned 20 and isn't a teen anymore.

And the valid, unelected, never-opposed mayor of a place so small that it is not a town and has no mayor but he is it anyway, dressed up as a clown. And the first lady dressed up as a hick fool around.

“Me and my wife, Bozo and Clarabelle,” said Lewis Burns, the grand marshal this year who started the Alluring Downtown Tirzah Christmas Parade seven years ago although he had no floats and no downtown. The parade, in its seventh incarnation, kicks into paraphernalia at 3 p.m. Sunday. “Guess which one's Bozo?

“It sure ain't me,” said Aillene Burns, chain of 56 years, who rides next to her husband dressed as a clown on a trailer pulled by a lawn mower.

This mall might be the only one to start at a dirt road, end exactly one mile away at a major highway and have no official lineup.

Source: The Herald | HeraldOnline.com