Bull!

“Bull!” the lady shouted at a TV reporter.
The ABC Evening News had just reported your child was more likely to end up REPUBLICAN if taken to a July 4th parade.
“Ya don’t hafta be Conservative or Republican to love this country.”
I agree.
I have been back and forth across this great land from sea to shining sea.
I’ve seen the Grand Tetons at dawn, something every American by law should be required to do.
I drove my van up Pikes Peak where Katharine Lee Bates wrote the words for “America the Beautiful.”
Purple mountain majesties to the west, and amber waves of grain to the east.

Yrs truly with the “One Nation Under God” bicycle-float, July 4th, 1955 (I’m 11).

I certainly viewed enough 4th of July parades as a child, and even participated in a few.
I marched in one with my Cub-Scout pack, and shortly after the words “Under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance, my father constructed a garish bicycle-float for me to ride.
What I remember is how unrideable it was, how mostly I just pushed it.
A gust of wind could topple it.
I also remember being accosted by a sweaty breast-beating matron along the parade route.
That bicycle-float placed third.
I am hardly Conservative.
In fact, all my siblings loudly denounce me as “rebellious” and “of-the-Devil” because I’m not like them.
.....That I have the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to poke fun at Conservative icon Rush Limbaugh (gasp).
Years ago someone told me “all Liberals should be lined up and shot.”
I was stunned.
Did that include me?
“We need to cut these freeloaders, so I can continue to collect my six-figure salary.”
“Obama is Muslim, and the Devil incarnate.”