Memorial Day in Kansas

An interesting ride across Kansas today. I started this morning by "getting the hell outta Dodge" (I've waited all my life to use that). Across the heartland of America I passed miles and miles...and MILES...of farmland. In between, every fifty or sixty miles or so, I'd pass a small town. The farmers and their families had obviously taken today off, and in churchyards, cemeteries, town squares, and veterans memorials, they were out there, all along US 50, across the breadth of Kansas, honoring our war dead with flags and flowers. Things may be different in Manhattan and Los Angeles, but in the nation in between those places, Americans have not forgotten. Memorial Day isn't about cookouts, or a day at the lake, or a mattress sale (how profane). It's a solemn occasion to honor those who died wherever and for whatever the Nation has sent them...without questioning why. Call us quaint, or backward, or hayseeds, or rednecks...but I stand with the good people of Kansas whom I saw today taking a day off from working from before dawn til often after dusk to feed us so that they might remember those who have fallen for all our sake.