Fourth of July and Winning

If you are ever nostalgic for the America that you remember from Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best, (when was the last time the media told us that Father does know best?), plan your summer vacation around visiting a small town on Independence Day.  I lived for maaany years in Arlington, TX.  It has been about 40 years since Arlington could have been considered a small town.  Still, it had a good parade and an excellent fireworks show.  But looking for a parking spot in a crowd of thousands of cars does not give you that nostalgic, patriotic feeling.  It mostly gave me a headache.

Last year, I wrote about the wonderful fireworks show, parade, and balloon festival here in Gunnison.  Just about 50 miles away is a very small town called Lake City.  I haven't seen their fireworks yet, but to me the main draw is the reading of the Declaration of Independence.   They have colonial re-enactors ring bells and performing a reading on the town square.  I think we all need to be reminded of our history and what the holiday is all about.

When I was a kid in Gruver, TX, we had a great celebration in the city park (yes, THE city park, there was only one).  They had a greased pole with a pocket knife taped to the top.  Anyone who could climb to the top got the knife.  When I was 11, the new kid in town, Russell Murphy made it.  I think they had used the same knife for the past five years.  No one had even come close to getting to the top.   The city workers also put pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters in the sandbox for a real life treasure hunt.  Rumor was that a kid found a silver dollar back in '72.  All I ever found was pennies and the occasional gift from stray cats.

I have mellowed with age, but until very recently, I was extremely competitive.  I once bragged to a co-worker that I beat my 10 year old daughter 32 - 10 in "slug bug / bruiser cruiser" on the way to work.  He was just as competitive.  His wife threatened to make him walk if he didn't stop counting PT cruisers on their drive.  Anyway, my competitive drive was still in its early stages back in Gruver.  I wasn't very athletic, but I really thought through the games.  One I was sure I would win was the shoe race.   In a shoe race, competitors take off their shoes and the judges mix them into a big pile at one end of the park.  The competitors return to the other end.  Then they race to the pile, put on their shoes and race back to the finish line.  In those pre-velcro days, I concluded that a lot of time was wasted tying the shoes.  So, I wore my cowboy boots, figuring that the loss of some of my already tortoise-like speed would be more than offset by not having to tie my sneakers.  When the shoes were piled, I discovered an unforeseen benefit - mine were the only boots in the pile!  When the whistle blew, we all ran for the pile.  I arrived in about the middle of the pack and immediately grabbed my boots, pulled them on and raced back.  But my friend, Clifton was also starting back and he was faster!  He also was a strategist - he had marked his white shoes with a red magic marker and didn't bother tying them.  So as we ran back toward the finish line, I was slipping all over the dried mid-summer straw that passes for grass in July in Texas.  Clifton was stopping every ten yards to put his shoes back on.  We traded the lead back and forth like NASCAR drivers on pit stops.  And as we slipped and tripped the last few yards, Curt passed us both, with his nice tightly tied PF Flyers.  Speed beats strategy every time.

My last chance at a blue ribbon was in the bicycle race.  As I said before, I was athletically challenged, so I didn't even come close to the blue ribbon, or the red, or the green.  I think I finished fifth out of eight.  My little sister, LeAnne, the most athletically gifted, but somehow the least competitive of all of us raced in the second grader's race.  She could not have cared less about winning.  So at the whistle, she took off at a leisurely pace and wove all over the street like a drunken sailor, waving to everyone she might possibly know.  She fell so far behind, I was almost embarrassed for her.  Or at least would have been if she were not my sister.   Then I learned how cruel life can be.  LeAnne was so far behind her race that the first grader's race started.  She finished just ahead of the first six year old to cross the line.  In fact, she was so far behind the last place finisher in her race, the judges thought she won the next race!  With a huge smile, she took her blue ribbon and proudly showed it to all her friends, and of course to all my friends.  Then, it occupied a prominent place on the bulletin board in her room.  Until it mysteriously disappeared.  Last summer our dad found the perfect sign to take the place of the ribbon in her game room.  It says, "I'm so far behind, it looks like I'm ahead."  Some people are just winners, no matter where and when they finish.