A big D.C. parade. Expensive. Meaningless. Evocative of nothing.
Parades usually mean something, provide joy or energy or create a cohesiveness, a reason for the event. Thousands of parades every year do just that as did the parade that morphed into a No Kings protest here in Eureka Springs on the 12th.
There were smiles, shouts of togetherness, appreciation, belief, flags of all colors including pink, finally lots of pink. The very bricks and rocks seemed happy this human thing was going on. It was a good day.
As was a day long ago when I first felt the soul of a parade. Memorial Day, two dozen or so veterans age 50 t0 80, dressed in the parts of uniforms that still fit, gathered in the school parking lot: a trumpeter, flags, rifles. The order to march which they did in some semblance of control. I scoffed as only a teenager can scoff but followed along, to Main Street, left where a couple more vets joined from the Pheasant Bar, more from the Mint Bar. At the end of Main, a right turn, a block past the hotel, into the park, halt at the northern bank of a transecting creek.
Again, call to attention, flags flutter, the trumpeter licks his lips and blows Taps with clarity and beauty across the land. A call to arms brings volley after volley, 21 shots. A nanosecond of quiet, then “At ease!” An even longer silence as each of us retakes who we had been minutes before.
I stayed there on the grass, wiping tears, and feeling that something had happened, that there had been a war, that these men had fought in foreign countries, that they had given me a gift, that these mountains and valleys sheltered me because of them.
Later I read my Civics textbook (yes, civics classes were taught in public schools) where I found a most profound sentence, one that gave meaning and power to that parade down Main Street and the one in Eureka Springs on the 12th.
The Preamble to our Constitution. It remains one of the finest pieces of prose ever. Look at it.
Who? We the people of the United States
Why? Six reasons. To form a more perfect Union. To establish justice. To ensure domestic tranquility. To provide for the common defense. To promote the general welfare. To secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves our posterity.
What? Do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.
That sentence still takes my breath, still puts me back on the grass along a creek where for the first time I was both humbled and proud of “We the people” who celebrate that sentence, the amendments that follow, and all the colors and sounds of a country again deposing a bid for monarchy.
So, the demented old man had his parade. Rubio yawned.
It still knocks me over, still puts me back on the grass along that creek when for the first time I was both humbled and proud to be part of this country, to be one of the “We, the people.”
So, the demented old man had his parade. Meaningless. But expensive.
Marie Howard