On the morning of November 30, a 75-foot long beast-from-the-deep will snake its way down Euclid Avenue. From a 14-foot high head, its torpedo-shaped body will undulate in the serpentine humps of a mammal perhaps gone to ground but certainly not beached.

Pretty poetic stuff, huh?

This Lake Erie Monster is but one of the creations of the fertile mind of Paul Olingy for the Homecoming Parade he's putting together for the holidays, the "parade of parades" that will be the capping moment of Cleveland's Bicentennial year.

"I read an article in the Plain Dealer last April about the creature in Lake Erie and thought that would be a wonderful addition to the parade," Olingy said.

Cuyahoga Community College Professor Damon Stakes wrote the article. Stakes writes, "...there are too many documented accounts of this creature to ignore the existence of the Lake Erie monster."

Stakes says reports of the monster go back to at least 1817, and that more than a dozen sightings have been reported since 1960. The latest, he says, was in 1993.

The next sighting will be when the framework-and-balloons monster will be propelled down the street by 25 people who will move its form up and down, just as the monster moves in the lake. By the way, this beast on land is 40-to-45 feet longer than the denizen of the deep. This one is made of 10,000 balloons tied to a lightweight frame.

A local balloon art company, The Pink Gorilla, is building the creature. Company president Cornelia Franklin says their only concern is the weather. "If it's windy," she says, "the monster may not undulate as much as we'd like."

Lake Erie Monster is one of 30 floats that will be in the parade.

Most will come from Cleveland neighborhoods and communities. But, at least eight of the bigger ones will be built professionally by the Indianapolis company that constructs floats for the Indy 500 Parade and the Kentucky Derby Parade.

Those floats have been built in Indianapolis, taken apart and trucked here to be put back together again in the basement of the Convention Center.

Among them is the 40-foot float on which local native and television comediam Drew Carey will ride as parade Grand Marshal. Olingy says it will be a reproduction of a 1950 automobile. There will be glasses on the headlights to help give the front end of the "car" the Carey facial appearance.

Olingy has talked to Carey about the float and the other parts of the homecoming parade and celebration, and says, "Carey is as excited about all this as we are."

This year's reindeer-pulled chariot for Santa Claus is a 55-foot-long float, and Olingy says it's bigger than the Santa float in the Macy's Parade in New York.

The grand finale float stretches to 50 feet, but it goes up 22 feet, posing some problem with overhead wires. The float is designed in moving parts that rise and fall by people power and counterweights. The up and down sections show Cleveland: the down part the Cleveland of today, the up part the city of the future.

All of this is pretty heady stuff.

But that's the way this bicentennial year has been since the celebration began nearly a year ago.

And Paul Olingy is used to working with big ideas. For years, he was a big part of putting together the world's largest youth festival and parade, the Junior Orange Parade, in Miami, and its partner, the King Orange Parade.

Olingy came to Cleveland, hoping to become part of the Bicentennial project. He has done that.

The November 30th parade also will feature 28 marching bands, 200 more marching units, and "200 dancing candles".

Two-hundred kids from neighborhood community centers will dance down the street in the costumes of the candles adorning Cleveland's bicentennial year birthday cake.

A couple of things:

Happy Birthday wishes will be in order.

But don't try to blow out the candles.

OTHER BICENTENNIAL STORIES by John Herrington

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