Sunday, October 11, 2009

Protesters in the Sorghum Parade

In our section of the country and probably throughout the nation, fall is a time for festivals. The Native Americans celebrated fall as a time of harvest and thanksgiving for a good crop season. The Pilgrims did the same. The modern fall festivals are primarily a way to draw money into an area using some kind of gimmick. In our area, we have an apple festival, a marble festival, a copper festival, and many others, all tied to a local industry or tradition.

For our town it is the Sorghum Festival. In the mountains of Georgia early settlers found that they could grow sorghum cane and produce a thick, molasses-like syrup, good as a sweetener and good with biscuits and butter. Each year for the last 4o or so the local Jaycees have produced a festival that centers on sorghum making, where the cane is ground with a mule-powered mill, the juice cooked, and the syrup bottled. Together with traditional music, games, and arts and crafts, it draws a large crowd for two weekends in October.

The festival kicks off with a parade of floats, cars, horseback riders, tractors, and the usual small town attractions. This year there was an entry that turned many off. The so-called teabaggers entered themselves. They carried their hate filled posters and yelled nasty things about the president and the government as they walked along. Interestingly enough they got little positive response from the crowd. One lady in particular made me want to get in her face. She carried a poster with a nasty comment about public servants and a drawing of an outdoor toilet on top of another.

As a retired public servant, it simply outraged me that these people had the nerve to walk along behind firemen, and past police and EMT's, who were making the route safe for them to walk, and chant nasty lines and carry nasty signs putting down those sworn to protect them. Then there are the soldiers, public servants themselves, who have fought to protect their right to protest. I still seethe with anger when I think about it.

As I said, the people in our town are pretty polite, so they mostly remained silent or laughed at the outrageousness of the teabaggers' behavior. In the area where we stood amongst about 150 people, only two small groups or three or four cheered as they went by. It was very heartening to watch the response of the viewers. The people around me were outraged. The parade announcer ignored them as well. All in all, it was quite a negative response to a bunch of anti-government, unpatriotic Republicans in a Republican stronghold. I am proud of my town.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably some imposters wanting to make teabaggers look bad. Ever think of that?

Georgia Mountain Man said...

No one has to make teabaggers look bad. They accomplish that quite well by themselves.

Diane J Standiford said...

LOL, what you said above.
I too spent 18 years as a public servant, making sure water, electricity, sewer, garbage, all taken care of the city of Seattle. I could have made more money in mgmnt at Starbucks, Amazon.com or Microsoft, but my mother imptressed upon me how impotant public service was. I too am proud of those who reacted to the negative over those tea baggers. Do they know the original tea party was AGAINST another country? THEY are protestig against America.
THEY are traitors in my book.

Diane J Standiford said...

sorry about the misspellings, the sun is in my eyes

That Baptist Ain't Right said...

Those people are doing the same thing everywhere & then have the gall to claim they are speaking for the majority of Americans. Go figure.

Anonymous said...

You like those rowdy, wild protests that the leftists are involved in where cars are overturned and public property is destroyed, huh?