Liberal or Conservative, Happy Fourth of July
A Excerpt from “Upside Down Independence Day”
a satire by Gregg Sapp
There is no love lost between the neighboring southern Ohio towns of Coon Creek and Golden Springs. Coon Creek is a blue collar town that’s seen better times. Golden Springs is a liberal college town. Acts of vandalism have occurred in both prior to their Fourth of July celebrations, and each suspects the other is guilty. The following excerpts take place the morning of Independence Day.
The Coon Creek Grand Old USA Independence Day Parade was a passionate display of patriotism and a rip-roaring blowout of a good time that did America proud. Boog never missed the Fourth of July parade, and every year he remarked it was just as good as the last year. That’s because the parade was almost identical from year to year. In fact, that’s what he liked about it. Familiarity, consistency, regularity — all in all, it was what folks in Coon Creek called “tradition.” In good times, the parade celebrated success, and in bad times it provided diversion. Tradition absorbed every contingency through the filter of selective memory.
The parade began, of course, with the Coon Creek High School marching band. They played “25 or 6 to 4” so loud and fast that it sounded like an alarm clock on amphetamines. Boog sort of sang along, and when he didn’t know the words he belted out:
Ba da ba da bum, Ba da ba da bum, Ba da da da da da da bum
The band major was a cute girl whose costume was tight and glittery; she kept dropping the baton, but every time she did, she got a sympathetic ovation.
Next came the classic cars, each one an American-made gas-guzzler. None of them were in what you might call mint condition — some seemed held together with superglue — but they were all clean, down to the gleaming grilles and shiny tires. Paddy Driscol drove the same 1960 Corvair that his father had told him he’d been born in. The slow rolling motorcade included several extinct models: Packards, LaSalles, DeSotos, Studebakers, and even a Tucker 1948 sedan. Their bygone era was before Boog’s time, but even so he felt a weird nostalgia for them, like a déjà vu for something that had never happened. Coon Creek was a lot like those old automobiles — obsolete, beat up, but still running.
The town’s one and only firetruck followed the cars, washed and waxed for the day, and accompanied on foot by members of the volunteer fire department sweating in their slickers and helmets, each one carrying a boot and soliciting spare change to support the cause. It’d been a bad year for fires, and they looked tired. When he got back from Afghanistan, Boog wanted to join them, but somebody mentioned urine tests, and that discouraged him from trying. Not one to hold a grudge, though, he put a dollar in a boot when they marched by.
Then came the floats, Boog’s favorite part. Joe of Joe’s Sunoco led the way as usual, driving his hook-and-chain wrecker, draped with red, white, and blue streamers, with its windows wide open and its sound system blaring a continuous loop of “Ragged Old Flag,” “American Soldier,” “Some Gave All,” “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly,” and “God Bless the USA.” Missing that year was “Born in the USA,” which Joe used to like until he read the lyrics and realized it was really anti-war, which meant anti-American. Ms. Nixon’s middle school class contributed its usual oversize American flag made entirely of Lego blocks. The women of the public library’s book club dressed as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Lincoln, and sat around an overturned barrel on a flatbed trailer, passing a paper and scribbling on it to simulate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Coon Creek Diner sponsored a float with a giant cherry pie made of crepe paper, chicken wire, and tennis balls spray painted red, pulled by a milk truck. The Drink Here Tavern’s float featured Buzz Pringle wearing an Uncle Sam costume complete with a top hat and billy-goat beard; he sat on a stool in front of a bar, raising a glass of beer to toast Old Glory.
Annually, the AMVETS sponsored the last float, which they dedicated to America’s warriors. On it, actual veterans of World War II reenacted the flag raising at Iwo Jima. Owing to their age and fragility, though, the men were seated, and the flag was borne by bungee cords. Usually, Faye Pfeiffer walked alongside the float and handed out peppermint candies and miniature copies of the US Constitution, but this year she was strangely absent. Boog was disappointed because he’d misplaced the copy he’d picked up last year, and this year he intended to actually read it to see what it said about the right to bear arms.
Finally — and anticlimactically as far as Boog was concerned — Very Important Persons rode by in convertibles to schmooze and be seen. Mayor Ball received jeers and cheers in nearly equal amounts, all the while keeping the same fake smile frozen on his face. The Coon Queen hugged a bouquet of roses and blew kisses to admirers. Burl Slocum drove a tractor bearing a giant Reverend Belvedere for Mayor sign, and he was followed, on horseback, by the reverend himself, wearing American-flag and Jesus-fish lapel pins, and a Make American Great Again baseball cap, while tossing fun-size candy bars from his saddle bag. To show his approval, Boog saluted him with one of his famous two-fingered whistles.
After the parade was over and most of the crowd had dispersed, Boog and the Galoots reconvened at their corner, finishing the last of the beers in the cooler to lighten it before they proceeded to the Drink Here Tavern for more. His mother returned with Justin and asked Boog if he minded that she took him to the Coon Creek Baptist Church of God’s ice cream social for a treat.
“Sure,” Boog replied. “Just make sure to have him back by dinnertime.”
“Of course,” Toad agreed, then asked, “Will I see you at the fireworks this evening?”
Boog looked down and shook his head sideways. “I don’t think so, Maw. Me an’ the boys got something special planned.”
Boog was relieved that she didn’t press for details. If she knew, she wouldn’t approve of his plan to create mischief in that hippie college town across the gorge, Golden Springs.
Marveling at the sight, Mazie sputtered, “Whoa. This is so… I don’t know. It’s sure different from the Fourth of July parade where I come from.”
“How so?” Rufus asked.
Without thinking it through, she replied, “It isn’t white trash.”
“Huh? White trash?”
“I just meant that it’s different here. I mean, like, look at it — ”
The Golden Springs Peace and Love Parade had no clear beginning or end. Anybody who felt so inspired was welcome to step off the curb and become part of the fanfare. The Team of Strangers had come to watch it together, but quickly separated into other pursuits. Quang got into the spirit right away, joining a gang of undergraduates tossing Frisbees and doing trick catches. El Jefe accepted a joint passed to him and fell in with the cannabis-rights crowd, who chanted: “Stop the lies! Legalize!” When Taara Ali saw a bunch of white ladies from a belly-dancing class moving and shaking in the streets, she called out “cultural appropriation!” and, knotting together the loose ends of her shirt, jumped in to show them the proper method.
Mazie felt like an anthropologist doing fieldwork. She locked her arm around a lamppost so she could watch without getting swept into the fracas. She appreciated Rufus for staying with her, to serve as a second set of eyes to confirm what she saw.
It was more of a mob party than a parade. Instead of a marching band, there were buskers, wandering minstrels, bongo drummers, a barbershop quartet, and bagpipers. Square dancers do-si-doed in the fire lane and swung unwitting partners who just happened to pass by. A lawn mower drill team executed complex maneuvers in the street. Dominatrixes in leather led middle-aged men wearing diapers on studded leashes. Zombies and mermaids walked arm in arm. Mazie had to do a double take before she realized that the body painted people riding unicycles were, in fact, totally nude.
Mazie simultaneously thought, That’s so cool, and, I could never do that.
Mazie noted that the queen bee on the Save the Bees float was a man in drag. Rufus wondered what, exactly, was the point of Mother Earth and the Grim Reaper riding on the same float. When women tossed condoms from the Planned Parenthood float, Mazie caught one and put it in her purse. She and Rufus both agreed that the six-foot-tall vagina riding a motorcycle was way over the top.
At the finale of the parade, the master of ceremonies, Roscoe Alolo, rode by in a float decorated in Ndebele patterns. Instead of his Mao cap, he wore a kufi hat. A spear-wielding crew of Zulu warriors marched alongside him. The crowd loved it. They chanted “A-lo-lo, A-lo-lo.” Periodically, the float stopped and, from his pedestal, Roscoe declaimed, “Dawa ya moto ni moto.”
Everybody cheered as if they knew what that meant.
The parade continued long after it ended. Since its momentum was going in their direction, Mazie and Rufus fell in behind a group of rodeo clowns playing kazoos, which they followed to the edge of town. There, the parade turned back on itself and returned in the direction from whence it had come. Suddenly they stood alone in the middle of the street, and Mazie and Rufus doubled over with laughter, as if finally surrendering to the struggle to keep straight faces.
“Un-fucking believable,” Mazie said when she finally recovered control of her breath.
