CLOMP, CLOMP—Above, Reed’s Sleep Shop & Home Furnishings advertises along the Conejo Valley Days parade route. At right, kids don boots and crowns for the 1985 CVD Kids Parade.
It’s been a decade since community groups of all sorts assembled to march down Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Now there’s less than a month before they do it again.
The Conejo Valley Parade is a result of the efforts of T.O. native Wendy MacLeod, who had moved away as a young adult but returned last year, and a committee she formed after learning many of the traditions surrounding the annual Conejo Valley Days carnival had died out decades ago.
Determined to bring back some of the good old days, she decided to begin with a parade with that very theme.
It hasn’t been easy, but neither MacLeod nor the committee has shied away from the hard work.
“There was a guy on Facebook who said, ‘There’s this woman going around saying she is going to bring back the parade. Does she have any idea it takes a year?’” MacLeod said. “After we’ve come this far, I’m going to tell you, he wasn’t wrong—but we’re going to do it anyway.”
With the parade coming up fast–it takes place May 5–the committee—which has dubbed itself Fargo’s Angels after Donna Fargo, a longtime Thousand Oaks resident and major force behind the early Conejo Valley Days events—has been busy checking off city requirements, gathering entrants, fundraising and putting finishing touches on fun surprises.
WAGON TRAIL—Girls in their country finest lead the way with covered wagons during the 1972 kids parade.
Luckily, they’re no longer alone. While they started as a small group of about 20, they’ve gathered key supporters along the way.
The Elks Club agreed to host a major fundraising event and lend support, and Rotary Club of Westlake Village Sunrise agreed to come on board as a partner. The club, a nonprofit experienced in staging events, got to work immediately after deciding to take the project on around the end of 2023.
“Wendy’s tenacity caught our interest and touched our hearts,” said A.J. Steinberg, who chairs fundraising for the Rotary Club. “I’m a 20-plus-year large-event planner and I see a lot of disenfranchised committees and people just phoning it in, but when I spent time with that group, I got inspired.”
Photos courtesy of the Thousand Oaks Library
Along with MacLeod, the club works closely with City of Thousand Oaks staff members to help complete required paperwork— there’s a lot of it—and iron out permitting details. They also help with some of the background organization, like maintaining the parade’s website (conejovalleyparade.org) and keeping financial records, including sponsorships and donations.
Meanwhile, the Fargo’s Angels team does much of the boots-on-the-ground work. They’ve gathered most of the sponsorships and stirred up enthusiasm for entries (which are now closed). They will be putting up no parking signs every 100 feet along the parade route 72 hours prior to the event and have received signed permission from businesses to allow them to place a portable toilet on their properties the day of the parade. It’s not glamorous, but it has to be done, per the city.
Figuring all of this out has been an interesting and sometimes stressful process. Because the city hasn’t had a parade in so long and because so much has changed since it did, there weren’t standard requirements for a parade versus other types of public events, so the committee and the city have had to work it out, MacLeod said.
COWBOYS AND CONEJOS— ”Yellowstone” actor Rudy Ramos, at far left, is one of the local celebrities scheduled to ride in this year’s Conejo Valley Parade. Also watch for actors from the television series “CHiPs” on vintage motorcycles. At left is a 1971 prize-winning float by the Las Flores Neighborhood Girl Scouts featuring a huge rabbit named Charlie Conejo. Courtesy of the Thousand Oaks Library
“There were times I was on needles and pins and worried I was going to be the town fool. Just when I thought we were gaining leverage, we would get slapped with something unexpected and get sidelined,” she said.
But she doesn’t blame the city.
“I think everything is different with the world we live in. They don’t have experience putting on a parade, neither do I and neither does the Sunrise Rotary,” MacLeod said.
She’s grateful the city allowed the permit despite it usually requiring much more time than the parade committee had.
Permitting issues haven’t been the biggest setback. That was something much more personal to the Angels and more heartbreaking.
Courtesy of Rudy Ramos
For weeks they had tossed around names of people to serve as the grand marshal. Local Hollywood celebrities were discussed. Then a suggestion came from someone on the Rescue the Conejo Valley Days Parade Facebook page.
“A guy . . . posted a picture of Brett (Taylor) and said Brett should be the grand marshal and I said, ‘Hell, yes,’” MacLeod said.
It wasn’t just her. Committee members immediately embraced the idea of honoring Taylor, a man with special needs who grew up in Thousand Oaks and volunteered anywhere in the community a person can volunteer, though he had special relationships with the area’s firefighter and law enforcement officials.
Support for the idea spread through town, but likely nobody was as excited about the choice as Taylor himself, who told friends and strangers all about it.
“Everybody voted for me; the whole town knows me. I’ve been an icon for a lot of years,” Taylor said in a video interview, which he ended with a “Woohoo!”
On March 18, however, Taylor died unexpectedly at home.
“I cried for four days,” MacLeod said, adding there was never a question that “Buckaroo Brett” Taylor would remain the grand marshal.
In Taylor’s honor, the Angels vowed to work even harder to bring an amazing parade to the city.
They have located and invited past Miss Conejo Valley Days and secured some local celebrities to ride down the boulevard. Among them is Newbury Park resident Rudy Ramos, likely best known for his recurring role as Felix Long on the television drama “Yellowstone” and as the character Wind on “High Chaparral.”
Having moved to the area in 2020, he didn’t know anything about Thousand Oaks traditions, but he, too, has enthusiastically embraced the May 5 event.
“Wendy called and asked me and I said yes, but I didn’t know much about the parade and asked her to send me some information,” Ramos said. “I’m real excited about being a part of bringing it back.”
Fitting for a Western television actor, Ramos decided to forego a fancy hot rod convertible and will be riding in an older truck sitting atop a weathered bench— and he couldn’t be happier.
With just about 20 days before the parade, there’s still much to do. The group is seeking volunteers for the day of the event (visit bit.ly/4cEdhIa to sign up) and, this week, went door-to-door with flyers advertising a window-decorating contest for businesses along Thousand Oaks Boulevard, another old-time tradition.
To learn more about the parade, go online to conejovalleyparade.org.
IN A NUTSHELL
The parade will begin at 9 a.m. May 5 at the corner of Duesenberg Drive and Thousand Oaks Boulevard and will continue west up the boulevard to Conejo School Road. The street will be closed to through traffic by 8 a.m.