Harvest Parade Float Committee Lowers Maximum Float Height to 11 Feet ‘for Bridge Reasons’

BRIDGEWATER — The Harvest Parade Float Committee voted Thursday to lower the maximum float height from 14 feet to 11 feet “for bridge reasons,” referencing the 2024 parade, when the First National Bank’s 13-foot cornucopia struck the Elm Street overpass, showering spectators with 200 pounds of decorative gourds.

“The bridge is 12 feet 6 inches. The float was 13 feet. The math was available to everyone,” said committee chairwoman Susan Merritt, who still keeps a dented mini-pumpkin from the incident on her desk “as a reminder that ambition needs a tape measure.” The new 11-foot limit includes “all appendages, waving participants, and unsecured foliage,” per the updated Float Code.

The ruling has thrown the parade’s competitive float division into turmoil. The Rotary Club, three-time defending champions, had already constructed a 13.5-foot “Mount Harvestmore” featuring carved foam presidents of the local historical society. “We are now sawing the presidents at the waist,” said Rotary float captain Jim Delgado. “It’s undignified. The presidents are undignified. Nobody is happy, least of all the presidents.”

The committee also standardized float speed at “processional” (3 mph), banned live turkeys “after the 2022 escape,” and required all candy thrown from floats to be individually wrapped and “thrown, not launched,” following an incident involving a slingshot and a spectator’s windshield.

Merritt urged entrants to see the height limit as a creative constraint: “Some of the greatest art in history was made under a bridge clearance. Probably.”

The 2024 gourd-shower incident has entered local legend — commemorated by Merritt’s desk pumpkin, a mural on the side of the hardware store (“The Day the Sky Rained Gourds”), and an annual moment of silence before the parade steps off. The bank, for its part, has embraced the new limit with a redesigned float: an 11-foot cornucopia “engineered for clearance,” with a foam owl on top wearing a tiny hard hat. “The owl is at 10 feet 11 inches,” Delgado confirmed. “We measured the owl separately. The owl is compliant.”

The Rotary’s sawed-off presidents have become the parade’s most anticipated entry — spectators are reportedly coming specifically to see “the waist-high founding fathers.” Delgado, initially furious, has come around: “The kids love it. They think it’s a magic trick. And honestly, sawing them at the waist was the most teamwork our club has shown in years.” Merritt, reviewing the final float roster, pronounced it “the safest, silliest parade in Bridgewater history — which, given the gourd incident, is saying something.”