To the editor:
On a beautiful summer day in Portage Lake, I attended the 4th of July parade, part of our centennial celebration. A rare summer day, cloudless and even hot. There was a slight breeze blowing, just enough to billow and flutter the American flag in the town square.
A flag about the size of a two-car garage. Melanie Dorice Saucier was there and from her stage on a flatbed truck in front of Coffins, belted out a glorious, clear, no frills rendition of our national anthem. No jazz or hip hop, just a respectful and traditional version in a voice that was angelic. She also did an unadorned and ungilded homage to the four service branches, to the resounding approval of the very large crowd.
The stage was now set! Old Glory a-billow in the breeze, hot dogs and hamburgers wafting their siren’s call from a hundred barbeque grills. Pig roast at the town hall, veterans of our wars removing their hats and becoming moist of eye. Old Farmalls and John Deeres, logging trucks, a float displaying Maine potatoes and maple syrup, a state police honor guard, fire trucks with sirens and flashing lights, Smokey the Bear and Sparky, Little Miss Ashland, John Martin pelting candy, Fraser Paper Co. handing out tree seedlings, Wesget Sipu in their native dress and even the charming Red Hat ladies. All this with the noise and pomp and excitement befitting an old-fashioned American parade with barking dogs and wide-eyed children darting in and out for the thrown candy.
I was moved and even a little choked up by all this. Here was middle America at her finest. The America of John Steinbeck. Of Walt Whitman and Norman Rockwell and of Mark Twain and Tom and Huck. And this was happening all over the land in countless small towns, not just Portage Lake, Maine.
But my warm, altruistic feelings of pride and renewed confidence that America still had virtue and belief in fundamental principles were suddenly and rudely dashed.
At first I thought it was a log skidder decorated in ripe canola which would have been appropriate. Nope. Apropos of nothing to do with the 4th of July or the centennial or anything else for that matter – a Sherman tank-sized HUMMER loomed into view. An $80,000, three miles per gallon shrine to ostentation and conspicuous consumption that had nothing to say to the proceedings or the onlookers except “Look at me!” And to make sure the message was not lost on us ’84 Nova and Dodge Dart drivers, the thing was painted a distress-signal yellow that could be seen from Mars. Even then I would recommend wearing welding goggles. And there is no polite way to describe the “Motto” displayed on the rear window but it was straight out of Marie Antoinette. Larry the Cable Guy doing his armpit noise routine at the Daughters of Isabella convention was in better taste.
In a time of worldwide recession, with mills laying off almost daily, of near record-breaking unemployment, this was a most inappropriate symbol. Especially in a region that has never recovered from 1929. Of a region whose people have had to struggle and scrape to cope by putting in two more rows of potatoes or breaking up a few extra Coca-Cola pallets to keep warm or glommed a few extra trout out of Beaver Brook. And when these measures didn’t work, were forced to migrate to the manufacturing gulags of Massachusetts and Connecticut. What few haven’t been sent “Off Shore.” Now there’s a euphemism for you.
The organizers of this parade in a town of a little over 300 souls are to be commended for the amazing effort and thought that went into this parade and all the other wonderful events of our centennial week and should be offended, as I am, that an icon of such blatant insensitivity and pointless vanity was allowed to creep into our parade. In fact, a lot of the people I talked to were.
Ashland
