PIEDMONT - Little Will Waddell will have candy aplenty for some time to come.

The 2-year-old and other kids along Piedmont's Fourth of July parade route were the benefactors of handfuls of Tootsie Rolls, Sweet Tarts and oodles of other candies as parade entries made their way from the service road adjacent Interstate 90 down Chestnut Street and Second Street to the city park.

Among those entries was George Arndt of Piedmont, piloting the "quarter-pint" - a tiny fire engine that serves as a mascot for the Piedmont Volunteer Fire Department.

Arndt said he and a friend bought the mini fire engine in the 1980s, when he was fire chief in Black Hawk. Arndt also has served with the Piedmont department, and it was during that time that he had the decals made for the hood of the truck.

Although the truck has a five horsepower engine and is capable of carrying an adult through a parade, Arndt said he forgot about the parade until a neighbor mentioned it, so had the fire engine on a trailer behind a pickup.

"I hadn't planned on even being here. I don't have the truck in running shape," he said as a string of youngsters took turns sitting in the driver's seat and sounding the siren on the little fire truck parked in the Piedmont park after the parade.

Another fire truck parked there was being used as a backdrop for a Fourth of July photo by Beth Oster of Rapid City. Her daughters, 3-year-old Selby and 18-month-old Mackenna, were dressed in red, white and blue togs and stood on the running board of the fire truck while their mom focused her camera on them.

Beth Oster read about the parade in the newspaper and thought it would be a fun family outing.

"What a great parade," she said.

Jeff Kreun fired up his 1941 art deco Chevrolet truck with a Champion apparatus body for the parade. He found the vehicle on Craig's List and hauled it from near Lincoln, Neb., about a year and a half ago.

"It had been a fire department brush truck in Michigan. A woman who was co-owner in a body shop sold it to me," he said.

The fire truck is among about 20 or so 1941-1946 art deco pickup trucks Kreun cares for at his home near Summerset.

"Instead of a rest home for these trucks, I call it my Art Deco Rust Ranch," he said.