A Small Town Parade and a Forever War

A letter to you, friend.

The parade started at noon last Saturday, but my kid had to be there early to line up to walk in it. Her cheer squad was carrying a banner for the rodeo in town.

We made it to town early enough for her to line up with the other girls, but I realized I forgot to pack sunscreen, and the kid would be in the sun for at least an hour, so I had to run by the Dollar General to grab sunblock. I found myself behind two other moms who also forgot sunscreen.

We could have shared, but I was already in line and needed gum anyway.

We found some shade under the big oak in the bank parking lot and waited for the parade to start. There were about 100 people lining Main Street…many arrived in golf carts and side-by-sides with orange flags swaying behind them as they drove — little vehicles with tails sticking up as they pulled onto the sidewalk to watch the parade.

I have lived most of my life in small towns, and the appearance of golf carts driving down our dying streets has become very common. There isn’t much traffic to worry about as you cruise down most Main Streets these days…not many businesses have made it through the hollowing out of rural America and not many folks are left to create any sort of traffic.

We don’t have stoplights. And even if we did, I guarantee you folks would just sit there and wave a hand to indicate that the other person should go first. No need for a red light when folks will stop of their own accord.

Small Town USA, by Judy Sando Bridges.

There were several older folks in lawn chairs with grandkids running in and out of the street. Most of the kids had Walmart bags at the ready for the Smarties and Tootsie Rolls they’d collect from the tractors and vintage cars on the parade route.

It was a windy day, and the orange flags swayed on their own, and the Walmart bags looked like they might pull a small kid up for a little ride if they caught the wind just right. I couldn’t help but think of the Wizard accidentally losing his rope and flying away from Dorothy or Mary Poppins with her open umbrella slowing drifting away…

I watched the kids and felt relaxed. I smiled as my husband talked about football and the heat.

The parade started as they always do with local police and sheriff’s departments creeping slowly by with car sirens blaring and candy flying out from the front seat. It continued with the VFW men in their white shirts and folded hats and a banner and an American flag.

Behind them were the cheerleaders and the old cars and the fire engines and two floats and finally the horses. The horses go last for obvious reasons, and that’s the moment that the kids walk back up the streets looking for any last bits of sweets left on the street.

The parade lasted about 30 minutes. Our daughter found us afterward and we got in the pickup to head home. Her face was bright red from the heat and her Scots-Irish heritage, but the sunscreen worked and she didn’t burn.

On the way home, we passed a boy of about 12 or so on a riding lawnmower on the side of the highway — he was driving with traffic but was off the road and in the grass. He was not mowing. He was shirtless and his little back was already tan from time in the sun.

Behind his mower, he pulled a cart with two other boys, also shirtless, and several buckets and fishing poles.

It made my husband grin from ear to ear. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking back to his own childhood outside of Hannibal, Missouri. He didn’t have a riding lawnmower back in the day, but he did walk down many roads on his way to a fishing hole.

It was a good day. A hot day but normal Missouri Saturday.

And then, as I sat on the back porch visiting with our middle son and his girlfriend that evening, I got an alert on my phone that said Trump sent Missouri bombers and service members to drop bombs on “nuclear sites” without any Congressional approval or any evidence or any imminent threat to America.

Shit.

I tried to not scream like I wanted. I tried to remember to be in the moment with family and not get up and start reading every article on the topic and then go on social media and engage with others on a war the lunatic in chief started after being elected to lower egg prices and a pledge to not start any wars.

This is America under the Trump regime…

Normal lives alongside the incredibly abnormal these days. A small town parade juxtaposed with bombs. Candy and another forever war. Fishing poles and deployments. A nice back porch conversation and the threat of a nuclear war.

Horrifying alongside the mundane.

I spend a lot of time thinking, and then I often write about my internal monologue. I can’t overstate how strange it is to live in this country under this regime. How everything is disjointed and confusing.

Are we still a democracy? Are we living under a dictator? Are we slipping or are we already gone?

Also, what’s for supper? And, I know we are out of towels because I am two loads of laundry behind. And, all the kids will be over tomorrow to celebrate a belated Father’s Day. I need groceries and I need to mop the kitchen and bathrooms.

I am fixated on the armed and masked men kidnapping people from American streets while making a sandwich for my daughter. I bought birthday presents for the grandkids in between chapters of Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat. I am planting trees and tending my garden while listening to NPR articles on the absolute incompetence in Trump’s Cabinet.

It all makes for a feeling of insanity. And I know that I am not the only one.

“Are they really going to sell off public lands?” I think as I empty the trash…

Reader, you may feel this too, and I want you to know that I see you. I know how you feel and I know there are millions of us going through the shock and awe of living under a quasi-dictatorship. Maybe it’s authoritarianism? Oligarchy?

To wake up to unspeakable horrors and then take a child to the park or read to a grandkid or make grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

All the things must be done in tandem. A computer screen with 20 tabs open. Maddening.

We can’t do everything, but we can do one thing every day and that’s what I do. I do what I can.

I do what I have the space for, and then I do life.

I am reminding you to do the same. Fight and then take a break. Protest and then garden. Write your lawmakers and then make supper and enjoy those around you.

Scream into the void and then come back to the fight.

~Jess