Amid the Petals, Friendships Bloom : With dedication, affection--and a shoestring budget--an all-volunteer Sierra Madre crew crafts a homespun float. : City Smart / How to thrive in the urban environment of Southern California

For 12 years, Jeff Mills has worked on the float. “I just really enjoy the people,” he said.

For 16 years, William “Spence” Spencer has made the trip back, driving down each December from his home in Northern California, just to work on the float. His years, and skill at decorating, have earned him an affectionate nickname: the Flower God.

This year, Janet Petty Sheffield, who lives now in South Carolina, came back with her two children--and all three set to work on the float, just as mom had when she was a girl.

“This is like your family,” said Nancy Patterson, overseeing the crew of volunteers putting together the tiny town of Sierra Madre’s entry in the 1996 Tournament of Roses Parade. “Maybe not, as they say, by blood--but by choice.”

For a week each year, scores of locals and former residents--from kids to grandmas and grandpas--pitch in to keep alive a tradition that dates back to 1917.

Each year, the town constructs its own homespun entry in the parade, which these days is dominated by mega-floats that typically cost $200,000 or more, are paid for by corporate sponsors and built by professionals.

In Sierra Madre, the float seems more evocative of something that would certainly take the grand prize in a college homecoming parade than an entry in an event that organizers say will be broadcast to 450 million people in 90 countries.

In Sierra Madre--population 11,000, no traffic lights, no parking meters--the float is an all-volunteer effort. It’s run on a shoestring budget. It’s built in an atmosphere that’s so hokey, it’s charming.

And the bonds that have formed over the years, the camaraderie and connections that draw a dedicated core crew of two dozen back each December to the yellow warehouse off Sierra Madre Boulevard--it’s almost too cloyingly sweet to be believed.

But it all seems quite real.

“These guys,” said Chip Young, pointing to Spencer and half a dozen others wielding glue brushes, “they might as well be my brothers.”

“This is straight out of Central Casting,” said Steve Leland, director of sponsor relations for the Tournament of Roses. “It is as sweet as it gets. This is the sweet story that everyone says newspapers won’t print.”

Of the 55 floats in the New Year’s Day parade, 17 are entered by cities--some as big as Los Angeles and Cleveland, some as small as Sierra Madre and nearby South Pasadena.

The Los Angeles float, built commercially, is the longest-running civic entry, dating back to 1897, Leland said.

This year, Azusa is back in the parade--for the first time since 1911. For $75,000, Azusa also hired out construction of its float, which features a car, trees and a bear, city administrator Henry Garcia said. He quickly added that locals are the ones actually attaching the daffodils, lilies and other flowers.

“It’s been a real draw for community pride and enhancement,” Garcia said.

In Sierra Madre, the float will cost about $18,000, Patterson said. Fund-raising is a year-around effort, she said, ranging from rummage sales to solicitation letters.

Titled “Dreams of Yesteryear,” the 1996 Sierra Madre float features a park bench, a tree, two dogs, two railroad posts and a replica of the Red Cars that used to connect the San Gabriel Valley town to the rest of Southern California by rail.

Some 800 pounds of potatoes will make up a cobblestone path. The posts are covered with coconut. And the roof of the Red Car is plastered with seaweed.

The sides of the float will be covered with pine branches--cut, Patterson said, from Christmas trees brought to the warehouse by townsfolk.

That spirit of sharing, Mills said, is evident everywhere in Sierra Madre. Local restaurants contribute pickle barrels that get recycled as water buckets for flowers; local liquor stores donate cardboard beer flats that get used to hold the cut flowers.

“It’s a community float, a community project,” said Ed Collins, 46, who grew up in Sierra Madre and came home from Arizona for the holidays--and the float. “In a small town like this, everyone gets involved.”

During his 12 years of service, Mills, 22, a senior at Santa Clara University, has steadily worked up the ranks in responsibility. This year, he has the honor of driving the float in the parade.

Spencer, 39, an engineer who grew up a local but now lives in the Northern California town of Nevada Valley, has twice driven the float, in 1988 and 1993.

On Wednesday morning, he arrived at the warehouse at 7, fully intending to work all day without stopping. “I’m just doing my best,” he said.

Said Doug Miller, a 40-year-old truck driver: “We get a lot of people here from very different backgrounds. Every year we come together for the common good. Look, here you’re pulling together for your friends.”

Then there are Steve and Belle Gagne. They met while working on the float as children. Now they’re married--and bringing their own brood to work on the float.

“We started as friends working together,” said Belle Gagne, 35, a Monrovia School District employee. “Too many late nights led to romance.”

“It just gets in your blood,” Steve Gagne, 43, a pressman, said of working on the float. This year, he said, will be his 33rd in a row.

“Every year it rolls around and you know where you need to be,” he added. “This is a small town. And it needs help. It needs my help. And your help. And anyone who wants to help.

“But isn’t that how things really get done? Seems to me that’s how things have always gotten done--here and everywhere.”