The Daffodil Parade is supposed to represent all that’s good and pure and chaste about the Puyallup Valley. On April 13, the queen and her court will sit demurely in Disney dresses, waving their white-gloved hands, escorted by classic cars and horse clubs and marching bands.
Is it too much to hope they’ll be wearing whalebone corsets under all that taffeta?
But then, as surely as if a firecracker were lit in their bloomers, spectators will be shocked back to the swinging, anything-goes 21st century.
Along the parade route in downtown Puyallup stands a naked woman. She is perched on tiptoes, her arms thrown back in surrender to a sun that won’t come out until July. She’s been there, in a full-monty yoga pose, for more than five years.
The bronze piece of public art at the corner of Pioneer Avenue and Meridian bears the innocuous name “Salutation.”
But an honorable citizen of Meekerville went before the City Council recently and exposed it for what it is: “a pornographic statue.”
Surely he spoke for all of us when he asked the council to get rid of this “unclothed, naked, spread-eagled nonsense” in the heart of Main Street, U.S.A.
“Thousands of people walk their children past this large statue, especially during the Daffodil Parade, and I imagine most parents try to cover the eyes of their kids or tell their kids to look the other way,” he said. “I do that with my own kids.”
So what if his children might walk blindly into a busy intersection? It’s a small price to pay to avoid what the right honorable citizen called “an affront to those with any sense of dignity or self-respect.”
Some would say Puyallup has much bigger affronts than this to fret about:
A parks and recreation department that’s been gutted. A voting base that hasn’t passed a school bond in 10 years. The obscene cost of taking your family for a day at the Puy ... er, Washington State Fair.
But until a moral compass is restored and all public artwork is properly covered, the people of Cowtown will continue their drift toward ennui and purposelessness.
Not to mention a need for frequent cold showers.
Hey, it worked for the Taliban: The honorable citizen requested that “Salutation” be removed from the public square.
“I will do it for free,” he told the council.
Why stop there? Puyallup has other naughty human forms in its 30-plus piece street-art collection, from “Motherhood on Pillow” to “Big Leg Momma.”
Alas, taking all of them down might upset the libertines at City Hall. So for now, we suggest a short-term fix for the sculptures, torn from the playbook of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft:
Buy them each a Snuggie, or a burqa.
Prickly work: Like a good-ol’ Puyallup boy, state Sen. Bruce Dammeier invoked a backwoods analogy during Wednesday’s floor debate about a health-care bill.
Porcupine sex.
“There’s an old question about how porcupines mate, and the answer is ‘very carefully,’” Dammeier said. “I think that goes to describe a lot of the negotiations that went into this bill.”
Thanks for the insight, Bruce. We assumed back-room legislative negotiations were more like skunk mating season.
And speaking of odors: Tacoma is calling its expanded every-other-week garbage pickup service “EOW.” But for hypersensitive Schnozzes like us, it should be pronounced eeewwwww!!
Can you hear me now? Seems Pierce County is switching over hundreds of cellphones from several vendors to a single contract with Verizon, and apparently there are some wrinkles to smooth out.
An inside source shared an exchange from the county executive’s monthly meeting of department managers:
IT director: “Are there dead zones in any county buildings?”
Answer: “Yes, at the Medical Examiner’s office.”
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