Founder's Day

I live in a very conventional Southern town with a population of about 3,000. Today, on my way home from the grocery store, I accidentally drove myself into the middle of the Founder’s Day Parade. I guess I should have been participating, since my husband’s ancestors were some of the original white settlers here, peacefully coexisting alongside the Cherokee before they were dispossessed. But I wasn't participating. Or I least, I hadn't planned to.

I eased up behind the local fire engine, stopped dead in the middle of the street, but occasionally roaring along at ¼ mile per hour. A load of teenagers in orange and black school t-shirts—Lions, supposedly—rode on top. At a sidewalk lemonade stand a girl began jockeying cups back and forth to them. I was amused. But when the fire chief got out and set up a ladder so that the troops on top could dismount, my patience evaporated.

I rolled down my window and waved frantically at an officer in a golf cart who was stationed about 50 yards away, on the other side of the fire truck, guarding the left turn I needed to take. The cart lurched toward me. I thought he was coming to see what I had to say, so I leaned out the window, smiling, and was about to speak—when he drove right on by! I didn’t get the chance to lie and tell him I had ice cream in the trunk (I did have Lean Cuisines), and therefore wouldn’t he please let me go around the fire truck and turn left and be on my way.

Sheesh!

So I drove around the fire truck and turned left and went on my way.