From left, John Steusloff, John Petrovich and Peter Clevering, of Homewood Disposal, help transform a garbage truck into Wendy the Waste Truck for local holiday light parades. (Bill Jones / Daily Southtown)

Light parades have been entertaining residents across the area throughout December.

But getting those public works-caliber vehicles ready to serve as dazzling displays on wheels is much different from decorating a residence.

“Your home doesn’t move 70 mph,” said Brendan O’Morrow, multimedia communications manager for Ozinga.

The Mokena-based company has been bringing its Merry Mixer to Chicago area events since 2017. It started as a vehicle pulled from the fleet, but Ozinga took a concrete mixer scheduled to be junked and refurbished it to serve as a show truck any time it is needed.

“The first year, we called it a prototype,” O’Morrow said. “Things were held together with clothesline. The second year, we dedicated a lot more time to figure out how to make it sustainable. We changed from rope to things that are used to hang pipe, so it’s tighter and holds together more.”

Jim McPhee discusses the trailer that hauled Santa’s sleigh during the Crete Country Christmas Parade of Lights and the subsequent charitable Santa’s Sleigh Parade earlier in December. (Bill Jones / Daily Southtown)

They also sourced lights that could handle the beating of a Midwest winter. O’Morrow said the team was able to draw on decades of professional experience at the company to figure out how to power it with an inverter and give the truck enough battery power to handle everything.

“It’s sort of a Frankenstein of a lot of different professional mechanics, electricians, builders,” O’Morrow said.

Among the events the Merry Mixer has graced this holiday season was the Tinley Park Chamber of Commerce Parade of Lights down Oak Park Avenue. Mary Kay Campbell, the chamber’s executive director, said the vehicle is always a highlight in a parade chock full of spectacular entries.

“Some really get pretty extravagant,” she said.

Another of the nearly 40 entries in this year’s Tinley Park parade was Homewood Disposal’s Wendy the Waste Truck, decked out in 6-foot antlers and a glowing red nose, pulling a big sleigh created by the company’s maintenance team. It is a crowd favorite, according to Peter Clevering, the company’s marketing director, noting the truck can take on different personas throughout the year, depending on the event.

“The Rudolph one gets the most attention with the red nose for the kids,” he said. “When it connects with the eyeballs on there, I think the kids really like that.”

Santa fell into the bucket of a Flossmoor public works vehicle while getting ready, but other popular characters wait up top for the village’s annual Holiday Lights Parade. (Bill Jones / Daily Southtown)

Homewood Disposal has been sending Wendy to parades and Touch-A-Truck events for nearly a decade. Clevering is on the team that prepares the vehicle, which is recreated every year from one of the fleet’s newer trucks.

“It’s usually on the route the day before, so there’s some work involved with cleaning up the garbage truck,” Clevering said.

Mechanics handle a lot of the work inside one of the company’s maintenance bays, applying eyeballs to the windshield, hanging lights on the 15-foot truck and hooking up a generator to power the sleigh. Clevering said the team loves being involved because they have connections to the communities where they work.

“A lot of these villages, we’ve been picking up their trash for decades,” Clevering said. “We get to know people.”

While it takes some time to get her ready, Clevering said he thinks it adds to the magic that children could have seen the same truck on a route just the day before.

“I wish it was quicker, that we could just hop in a truck,” he said. “But I think it makes a big difference that we go all out to do all this.”

In Flossmoor, where the light parade event is only a couple of years old, the Public Works Department has had a sharp learning curve. But it is already becoming a beloved tradition.

Flossmoor public works employees Ryan Jones, left, and Blaise Tucker prepare a backhoe for the village’s Holiday Light Parade earlier this month. (Bill Jones / Daily Southtown)

The village held its first Holiday Lights Parade in 2020 to provide holiday cheer during the pandemic. Without a big village gathering that year, Flossmoor employees decorated vehicles across village departments and took them all around town in an hourlong procession.

“It’s a nice thing,” Public Works Director John Brunke said. “Residents actually gather in the neighborhoods, come out to the sidewalks, and wave and watch the parade go by.”

Brunke said his department usually decorates four or five vehicles with lights and characters such as Santa Claus and Rudolph. The biggest challenges that first year were making sure the decorations were secure while also figuring out how to power the lights.

“It’s not a lot, but it’s more than you can put through a cigarette lighter,” Brunke said. “So you have to use a power inverter to power it all, so you don’t pop any breakers.”

They also have to be careful about which vehicles they select.

“Once you put the lights on, they become somewhat unusable for their purpose, so we don’t include certain vehicles in case they have to go out for a water main break or plow snow or something,” Brunke said.

But it is a fun thing for his department, Brunke added. The drivers in the parade enjoy waving to residents and seeing houses decorated along the route. It’s also a lot of fun for the team in the garage who put the decorations together.

“Guys actually take a lot of pride in it,” Brunke said. “They enjoy decorating the vehicles. … It’s a pretty cool experience.”

Mark Gerrity helps apply some vinyl strips to a trailer carrying Santa’s sleigh while in the Crete Public Works garage. The sleigh was part of the light parade during Crete Country Christmas earlier this month. (Bill Jones / Daily Southtown)

Jamie Healy, vice president of the Crete Area Chamber of Commerce, was involved with a very important element of the Crete Country Christmas Parade of Lights. For the past few years, her team has helped decorate a trailer that carries Santa’s sleigh down Main Street. And they have learned some lessons the hard way about the materials they use.

“We’ve done a little trial and error over the years,” Healy said. “You just never know in the Midwest: Is it going to be nice out? Is it going to be raining, snowing? Is it going to be super cold? Really windy?”

That means everything has to be held down tightly with zip ties or bungee cords, not only for the parade but also two subsequent days of charitable deliveries for Angels on Assignment. Healy said they need to make sure they have a generator — ideally one that’s not too loud — along with plenty of power strips.

“You need a lot of lights to really light it up,” Healy said. “What you might think is enough, for photos and things like that you have to make sure you have a ton. I feel like we’re constantly adding lights.”

Those lights help set the mobile stage for the big guy and the elves to bring some magic to Crete Country Christmas, which has been going since 1987.

“It’s honestly the most loved weekend of the year in our town,” Healy said. “Everyone always says it looks like a Hallmark movie in town.”

Bill Jones is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.