Monday marked the second official work session of The Brothers of the Bush Executive Design and Fabrication Committee.

TBotBEDaFC consists of Brothers Russ Defonce and Bruce Young. I’m of course there, but only in an advisory capacity — those guys do all the actual work.

We were set up in Brother Joe Dadey’s office, upstairs from his store — Adirondack Hamlets to Huts. Joe didn’t do any work, either. Instead, from time to time in his role as The Host with the Most, he graciously appeared, as if by magic, bearing plates of cookies. The cookies weren’t homemade, but I forgave him — at least this time.

Of course, what TBotBEDaFC was working on was the main prop for our fabulous Winter Carnival parade float. Given Bruce and Russ’s building skills, work proceeded in an efficient and precise manner. I mean, they showed up with measuring tapes, utility knives, work lights, fast-setting glue, slow-setting glue, hazmat suits, gloves, a sextant, a depth finder and other goodies too numerous to list here.

If it had been me, I’d have arrived with my Boy Scout knife and no clue how to proceed. But therein lies the secret of running a successful organization: You don’t have to know how to do a blessed thing yourself, as long as your goombahs do.

And so, while Russ and Bruce were measuring, cutting, taping, gluing and repeating the process, I was doing what I do best: stroking my beard and nodding as if I knew what was going on. And thus engaged, a sudden thought hit me: What we were doing, others were also doing — in some cases till the start of the parade.

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Then I thought some more …

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The parade usually has something near 80 entries. So taking TbotBEDaFC’s effort and multiplying it by 80. I wondered how many hours are spent by the parade participants themselves.

I only know about the Bro-hood, but for ballpark estimates, it’s a decent place to start.

For our float effort, just rounding up the materials for our mind-boggling prop took me, Sr. J.J., and Br. Bruce about two hours apiece. Then we met and spent another three hours discussing its set-up and presentation, and roughing out how the materials would be assembled.

The next week was the session in Br. Joe’s office. It took another two hours to prepare the big prop, in its most basic form. After that, it’s up to Br. Russ to make a bunch of secondary props. He already has the raw materials, but he has to saw, plane, sand and paint them. That’s at least 10 hours of his time.

Then Br. Bruce took the big prop home, where he has to paint it with the Cosmic designs only he can do justice to. That has to be another eight hours, at least.

After they finish those chores, it’s back in the office for another session, this time with Brs. Bruce, Russ, Sr. J.J. and me. Keep in mind, what we’ll be doing is a performance piece. The props themselves are nothing if not handled perfectly. So now we’re talking at least three rehearsal sessions of at least two hours apiece. And as an extra note, Sr. J.J. lives in Brasher Falls — travel time from there to here is about an hour in perfect weather. So in winter, it’s closer to an hour-and-a-half, which means she spends three hours just coming and going.

So much for our role with the float. We’ll also need another four people to complete the magnificent performance, and they have to rehearse their roles at least a couple of times. And beyond that, all of us have to scrounge up costumes and figure out makeup (Br. Bruce being the group’s makeup artist).

Since the float can’t propel itself, we need a truck and trailer. Luckily, Br. Jack Drury generously volunteered to lend us his vehicle and his chauffeur service. Actually, he didn’t volunteer doodle-squat, but he did give in to my fulsome flattery.

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Time, time, time …

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While those chores are being attended to, there are others needing completion, and foremost among them are our world-famous bubkes bucks that we hand out in the parade. They are hand-drawn by the Brothers’ Artist-for Life, honorary Br. Mike Cochran. And his job isn’t a mere matter of lettering and drawing just anything: Every year we feature two members of our group on the bills; Mike has to draw caricatures of them. And catch this: He almost never knows any of the peeps, so he has to come up with caricatures from hastily snapped photos. I’m proud to say, for the last 11 years he’s come up with winners every time. So how many hours does he have to spend doing it? I can’t give a precise count, since he works in hermetic isolation, but I can make a good estimate, which is a whole buttload.

Still, there’s a lot more that remains to be done, but I’ll spare you those details. Suffice it to say, we put lots o’ time in our parade preparation, and we’re a small, if not minimalist, group. How many people spend how many hours putting the HomEnergy floats together defies the imagination.

Mulling over all this, I figured the parade participants, en toto, must devote thousands and thousands of hours getting their entries up and running.

What I’ve been talking about is the floats themselves — none of this takes into account how much work the people organizing and running the parade do. If Jeff Branch, who is the majordomo of the parade itself, doesn’t wake up shrieking on the nights he manages to fall asleep, I’d be righteously surprised.

And the parade, lest we forget, is only one Carnival event. How many people and how much time does it take to carry off the Rotary Show, the Coronation, Arctic Golf, the Fry Pan Toss, the spaghetti dinners, the Ice Palace Fun Run, the receptions and all the rest? You tell me. Hells bells, when Katie VanAnden choreographed and directed the high school kids for the Rotary Show, they rehearsed five full months!

And speaking of the Ice Palace: It’s not only the showpiece of the entire Carnival; it’s also a monument of devotion to My Home Town.

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No thrills like cheap thrills

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Now here’s the thing: If you’ve got unlimited funds, putting on 10 days of festivities is no sweat. You just figure out what you want and then order it like takeout. Big deal. But when you’re working on a shoestring — which all of us are — you need a whole lot more than money. You need dedicated volunteers, skills and elbow grease galore — all of which we have, in spades.

And what is all this for? Only one thing — so everyone, from babies to bubushkas, can have fun. There’s no money to be gained (only money to be spent), no ego fluffing, no power tripping. Pure and simple, there’s only joy … in its purest and simplest form.

I read in the Enterprise that Malone won’t have a parade for their winter carnival this year. Mary Scharf, president of their chamber of commerce, said due to lack of participants and cold temperatures, they decided to cancel this year’s parade, and she intimated they might not have any in the future.

When I first read that, I thought, what wimps! Cancel a winter carnival event because it’s too cold? I can understand it being too cold to go swimming or sunbathing or spending a weekend in your favorite nudist colony. But a winter carnival?

Remember the one we had a few years ago where the day’s high was minus 13, which then plummeted to minus 29 that night? That was the most sparsely attended parade I’d ever been in, but it was also my rave-fave. And ya wanna know why? It’s because everyone there made a special effort to brave the elements and have a hoot-and-a-half. Folks’ spirits were at an all-time high before, during and after the parade.

But the more I thought about Malone and their parade-less carnival, the more sympathetic I became. I mean, what’s a winter carnival without a parade? I hope never to find out. And with our Carnival craziness, and crazies, I know I never will.