It is with some regret that we note the passing of yet another St. Louis tradition: The annual Clydesdale-conveyed St. Louis float in the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year's Day is no more.

The float had been sponsored by Anheuser-Busch Cos. since time immemorial. Its passing is yet another casualty of the takeover of the brewery three years ago by InBev. The Post-Dispatch's Todd Frankel reported on Nov. 18, the third anniversary of the takeover, that InBev's take-no-prisoners corporate culture now permeates Pestalozzi Street.

You can't blame A-B InBev's Brazilian managers for wondering if spending six figures to sponsor a parade float really was an effective way to market Budweiser to young beer drinkers. We can imagine them looking at that budget line and saying, "Que diabos!"

Which, roughly translated from the Portuguese, is "What the hell!"

Time was when these things didn't matter, or at least they mattered less than a favorite daughter pleading with her father to let her take over the Rose Bowl float.

In a 1989 interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Carlota "Lotsie" Busch Giersch, then of Ivy Wall, the Busch family estate in Pasadena, Calif., recalled asking her father, August A. "Gussie" Busch Jr., if she could be in charge of the brewery's Rose Bowl entry.

The 1954 parade entry had been a little tacky for her tastes; it was a castle, and everyone knows horses don't pull castles.

This was in the mid-1950s when Gussie Busch ran the brewery. Gussie, who'd once imported swans and Pekin ducks to decorate the ponds at Grant's Farm during Lotsie's 12-hour wedding reception (he caught her bridal bouquet) rarely denied his children anything.

For the next 30 years, Lotsie "produced" the St. Louis float, everything from coming up with the concept to helping glue on the rose buds and chrysanthemums. The float usually won one of the parade's many prizes, and the Clydesdales only pulled things that horses might actually pull. No stinkin' castles.

After the 1986 parade, Mrs. Giersch — who is now Carlota "Lotsie" Busch Webster — handed the Rose Bowl job to her daughters. Now 84, she lives in Palm Beach, Fla.

Today's A-B InBev is a leaner, more agile corporation than the A-B of 2008 and way more lean and agile than the A-B of 1954. They wear blue jeans in the executive suites. But they probably don't have as much fun. Shareholders will care about fun when horses pull castles.