Lucky for me, my Dad has always been a creative guy.

Back when I was little, he worked hard at including his kids in all manner of interesting projects.

During the spring we did yard clean up, in the winter it was firewood gathering, but in the summer we built floats for the White Center Jubilee Days Parade.

If you aren't familiar with what a parade float is, it begins usually with a theme and a few volunteers.

If one of us kids happened to be walking by when inspiration struck Dad, we involuntarily became volunteers.

After breakfast, with a pencil and paper in front of him, we all lobbied for our ideas and Dad dutifully jotted them down. Over time, our designs became more sophisticated as the whine of circular saws and banging of hammers in our carport drew the attention of talented neighbors.

Dad's only criteria were that the design should reflective of something that was currently in the news.

Seattle was voting on the new stadium the first year, and together we fashioned a plywood box mounted over a wooden go-cart and painted it up to look like a coliseum complete with flags.

The next year, Namu the Killer Whale was big news, and that became a float, a cute little tugboat pulled with a rope, which towed a black and white painted plywood cutout of an Orca.

The following year, Boeing created the sleek, futuristic jet, the SST (Supersonic Transport) and of course, this had to become a parade float.

Us kids piled up old bicycle parts, go-cart wheels and tools and Dad procured some aluminum printing press plates for skin.

After some hasty sketches we came up with a blueprint that Bill Boeing might not have approved of. And after much banging and sawing, in a while we had an interesting looking...thing, with a lot of metal plating on it.

Because Dad underestimated the support strength of the long pieces of wood, the 20 foot plus jet mock up had a decided sag right in the middle.

"No problem," he said, "We'll call it the 'Super SAGGING Transport!'"

Parade day arrived, and we trucked the behemoth to the Fieldhouse parking lot in two pieces for reassembly.

Because the cockpit was a bit undersized, I was chosen as the pilot.

My brother and my best friend became the motors and they had to squeeze under the sagging underbelly, stand up inside and push against the inner bulkhead.

Inside the belly of the beast, the "engines" couldn't see a thing, so in order to move around, I had to shout "go" or "stop" a lot like Howard Hughes did in the Spruce Goose.

This turned out to be more difficult than we imagined since the goofy aircraft replica was so long it couldn't negotiate turns.

We had to back up and go forward a couple of times at tight corners disrupting the floats behind us, which at the least provided some comic relief for the crowd.

The next project was even spacier. My brother and I loved flying saucer stories and we convinced Dad to help us build one.

I had a gas-powered go-cart by this time, and we constructed a tubed frame around it and added circular plywood decking, which we covered with silver colored cardboard, underhung with crepe paper skirting to hide the wheels.

Dad found a plexi-glas bubble from a discarded grocery store food display and that became the top.

Neighbor kids were recruited to become Martians, and my Mom snapped bathing caps on their heads, taped on metal egg whisks for antenna and smeared their faces with cold cream mixed with green food coloring.

On parade day, we unloaded the float, made last minute adjustments and got in line for the start. It didn't take long for me as the driver to realize that the use of the gas-powered cart was not a good idea.

For starters, the hole they cut for me to look out of the side was too small, forcing me to sit on the seat back and peer out of the bubble to see. Because of this, I couldn't reach both gas and brake pedals at the same time, and I had to hop back and forth to each pedal as needed. But worst of all, the exhaust was not vented properly and some of the fumes were building up inside the bubble on top.

I was a game kid, however, so we idled along at walking pace, me lurching the cart back and forth, both in an attempt to create some ventilation and because I couldn't see where I was going.

After the second right turn, somehow I lost track of the float in front of me and could see nothing but open road ahead. Way off in the distance, there were things that looked like parade floats, but I couldn't be sure from the growing brain fog, so...I hit the gas.

This was nice for me, since the fresh air was truly a life saver, but for parade watchers along the route, it must have been disconcerting to see this ground-based UFO whizzing past them at 30 miles an hour as I tried to catch up.

I was nearly at the front of the parade when I realized I'd made a wrong turn, so I whipped the contraption around to see my Martians running down Ambaum Boulevard toward me, cold cream dripping and signs asunder. I don't remember much after that, but I don't think we won any awards.

Dad didn't offer to help us with any more floats after this. Maybe it was because the following year, I had my drivers permit.