Shriners' Parade A Hit With Local Residents.

Parades are nothing unusual along Folkston's Main Street. There was the Charlton County Centennial Parade in February 1954 as the county marked its hundredth year of existence. That parade was a "biggie". Each day of the weakling celebration was devoted to a special historical topic. There was Pioneer Day, Black History Day, and others. Marchers formed into a mammoth parade which included oxen and wagons, covered wagons, old Model T Fords, fire trucks and marchers….marchers…marchers.

Perhaps one of the most unusual parades to move up and down Folkston's Main Street was a Shriner's parade.

It was the late 1950s and some 50 members of Masonic Lodges, mostly from Folkston's Masonic Lodge Number 196, were being indoctrinated into the Shriners. Alee Temple of Savannah formed one of the most colorful parades to be seen in Folkston.

Members of the organization gathered up entries from every Shrine Club for miles around. Jesup, Fernandina Beach, Savannah, and scores of other cities sent their entries into Folkston for the Shrine Parade.

Fun loving members brought their "hot sticks", charged electric probes they would use to shock parade watchers. Colorful floats and Ferris Wheels moved along Main Street and brightly dressed marchers with their sultan outfits played to the crowds on both sides of the street.

Then along came the heart of the parade, the fifty candidates who were to be initiated as Shriners followed, tied to a rope being pulled by a station wagon with the words "Fresh Meat" brightly painted on the front doors. Those men would pay the price for the day's entertainment.

That afternoon, inside the High School Gymnasium, came the price. The 50 inductees would suffer through hours of electrifying antics overseen by the veteran Shriners as they sought to become full-fledged Shriners. It required heavy-duty gasoline electric generators to supply the power needed for most of the initiation pranks. This was done all at the expense of the 50 candidates.

That evening, the inductees who were able, joined in a Shriner's Ball inside the Folkston Gymnasium, dolled out in their new red fez hats and shining Shriner's pins.

However, it was the parade left a lasting impression on the people of Charlton County. The night before the parade, sirens wailed all throughout the night in usually quiet residential neighborhoods. The fun-loving Shriners were here to leave their impression on Folkston. Female parade-watchers had their skirts blown high above their waists by compressed air tanks aimed by Shriners, embarrassing numbers of matronly onlookers.

Late that Saturday night the exhausted candidates and Shriner visitors called it a night cleaned up the gymnasium and returned to their homes. For years to come it would be the highlight of numbers of conversations as the people of Folkston and Charlton County long remembered the gigantic Shrine Parade of the late 1950s.