Howard Wilson cringes as he pulls up a picture on his laptop of modern-day pioneers standing on a brown Styrofoam rock, waving to crowds lining South Temple.
The float is a classic example of what to avoid when designing an entry for the Days of '47 parade, says Howard, 58, who teaches classes on how to turn yards of plastic and blocks of foam into awe-inspiring works of art with a life cycle of a few hours.
He always tells his students to keep one important factor in mind before unfurling a giant roll of floral sheeting: No matter how honorable your intentions might be, says Howard, "everybody in Utah has already seen dirt and sagebrush."
Rocks and log cabins might be authentic, he says, but at a parade, people want something to fuel their imaginations. They want color and glitter and high-stepping horses with sequined saddles. Pioneers in day-glow orange and beauty queens sitting atop giant rainbows and roses?
Why not?
"I subscribe to the 40/40 rule," says Howard, who has helped design and build commercial floats at Salt Lake City's Modern Display for 25 years. "Floats are viewed for 40 seconds from 40 feet away. You want to tell a story as simply as possible, or nobody will get it. You want that float to play to the children in all of us."
Parades are very anticipatory, he says. "People are always looking ahead for something better. They're always thinking, 'OK, that was nice. What's next?"'
Hoping to give people an appreciation for the effort that goes into all of those 40-second masterpieces, Howard met me for a Free Lunch chat in his office on July 5, the day after he worked about 20 hours straight to get a dozen floats to Provo for the annual Freedom Festival Parade.
Some of those floats will be spiffed up and paraded again in Salt Lake City on July 24, along with 10 new floats undergoing finishing touches, including one for Delta Airlines with a rain forest and a 727 carved out of Styrofoam. It's no wonder that Howard has dark circles under his eyes every July.
"My wife always tells me, 'We used to love the holidays,"' says Howard with a sigh, "'and then you went to work at Modern Display."' The dapper designer is a familiar sight on every parade route, closely checking each one of his fringed entries the way a dairy queen inspects her lipstick.
"We had a mechanical problem with one of the floats the other day — a broken axle," says Howard. "It took until 2:30 in the morning to fix it. Things happen, but at least it's not like the old days when if it rained, your float could turn to mush."
Instead of tissue paper and chicken wire, most of today's floats are covered with durable vinyl, ensuring that the decorations won't fall apart, even if Miss Utah's hair does.
Still, says Howard, anybody who dreams of creating an award-winning float for their church group or business should make sure that there's someplace to build it besides the back yard or garage.
"I've seen people take apart garages and remodel houses because they couldn't get their float out," he says. They obviously didn't pay attention to Howard Wilson's No. 2 rule: "Never build the proverbial boat in the basement."
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