Good Ol Daze

As I breathe a sigh of relief after giving birth to our "graduate" Honey Bucket for this year’s Good Ol Days celebration in Auburn, I will never look at ‘Honey Buckets’ in quite the same way. My name is Melanie and I am the newly appointed Relationship Manager in Auburn…and may I just say this year’s Good Ol Days was, for me anyway, a LABOR of love!

You may ask yourself what on earth an outhouse, or to use a more affectionate term, Honey Bucket, has to do with a credit union. I’d be delighted to tell you: absolutely nothing. Unless, of course, the credit union is located in Auburn, where the Honey Bucket is celebrated each year in the August Good Ol’ Days parade as part of the Honey Bucket Brigade. This year’s theme: Heroes Among Us. Our hero: the Teacher.

Because we chose teachers as our heroes, we decided to celebrate them by decorating our Honey Bucket in a grey and orange (our colors) cap and gown with “Graduate to Verity” printed boldly on the back. We succeeded in draping our silver-painted Honey Bucket in a grey gown with a grey cap proudly sitting on our Verity "V" and an orange and grey tassle swinging gently in the breeze...at least for a moment.

We were pleased with our 2-day effort, and we loaded our out-house on the out-bound truck to the parade. That gentle breeze however, suddenly whipped up and around our gown, stripping our out-house down to the pine and toppling the cap-wearing "V"to the ground. Not to worry. Our fast-thinking team, Amber, Joe and myself, grabbed hammers, glue and nails and by the time we got to the parking lot to line up for the parade, we had completely re-decorated our “graduate”.

We crowned our “V” with the cap and tassle just as we were directed to line-up. We were on the move. Success was ours! Our “teacher” Melissa, was picked up enroute and we prepared our pitching arms to get ready to toss Verity "stress" apples to the awaiting crowd. The girls on the Verity "graduate" Honey Bucket were a hit with the crowd. Even our adept driver, Joe, tossed Apples from the cab to those with outstretched arms. There were smiles all around as eager children caught the airborne Verity Apples, and our "Graduate" drove into the sunset, or at least to the end of the parade route.

I've got to admit, those little stress-releiving apples were certainly a relief to me in getting our Good Ol Days off to a Good Ol Start.