But that was later. At the kitchen table.
On Main Street, my mother was sitting in the front chair of the hay wagon next to Gus Halvorsen, and the whole town was staring at her, and Mason Reed was standing beside the wagon with his clipboard hanging at his side, looking like he wanted to die.
Gus waved his hand at Dale Ostby on the tractor.
“All right, Dale. Go on. Slow.”
Dale put it in gear.
The tractor started rolling again. The hay wagon lurched and then smoothed out. And my mother rode down Main Street on the veterans’ float for the first time in her life.
She didn’t wave.
She sat very straight in the folding chair with her hands in her lap. She looked straight ahead.
But the people on the sidewalk started to clap.
It started near the bank. Just a few people. Then the people across the street. Then the folding chairs behind the rope, where the other veterans were sitting, the ones who hadn’t ridden on the float. A man in a Vietnam Veteran cap stood up out of his chair and saluted her as the wagon went past.
Then another one.
Then all of them.
The whole half block behind the white rope. Every veteran who’d been given a reserved seat. They stood up one after another as the wagon rolled by, and every single one of them saluted my mother.
She didn’t look at them. She kept looking straight ahead. But I was walking alongside the wagon by then, and I could see her face, and I could see her chin shaking.
The band, around the corner on Third, started playing again. I don’t know who told them to. They played the Army song. The Caissons one. Slowly. Badly. The trombones were a half step flat.
It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
At the end of the parade route, at the courthouse, the float stopped in front of the black granite memorial. Every year, the parade ends there. The VFW chaplain says a prayer. Somebody reads the names of the county’s dead. A bugler plays Taps.
Gus got down off the wagon first. It took two men to help him. Then they helped my mother down.
She stood in front of the memorial. Gus stood beside her, leaning on his cane.
The VFW chaplain, Pastor Ron Gilbertson from Our Savior’s, came over with the list of names. He read it every year. There are sixty-three names on that memorial. World War One through Afghanistan.
He started toward the microphone.
Gus held out his hand.
“Ron,” he said. “Let her read it.”
Pastor Gilbertson stopped.
He looked at my mother.
My mother shook her head.
“Peg,” Gus said quietly. “Please. I’d like to hear Danny’s name in your voice. Just once.”
My mother stood there a long time.
Then she held out her hand for the list.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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