Department of Homeland Security
“Did you see the Farm Implement Parade last night?” So asked my 8th grade Speech Therapist.
“Oh gawd no.” I answered, a sour note on my face.
“Oh, it was great!”
The Farm Implement Parade was/is an annual parade held in November, sometime past dusk, of lighted farm equipment in the burgeoning metropolis of Sunnyside, Washington. Evidentally, the evidence being that my parents and others told me thusly (my parents going to the parade where I nor my brother wouldn’t), it was featured by Charles Kuralt in his seris of vignittes on quaint rural American festivals. When he retired (or was it died?), I saw him profiled as having “put towns on the map”, a lie as I don’t know and doubt seriously that anybody knows of any American municipality because Charles Kuwalt did a feature on it.
Flash forward to 2006. The Dempartment of Homeland Security has been exposed as pretty much one giant pork rind. For example, Indiana is listed as having more than 8,500 critical assets — 50 percent more than New York. I always maintain that the terrorists are somewhat of the ultimate urban snobs in terms of American knowledge. They know not from “Flyover Country”, essentially taking cues from where the media capitals of America are. It ultimately made little sense to suspect the Oklahoma City bombings as coming from Islamic terrorists. Attention Red State America: “Islamo-Fascists” do not even know you exist. (It is one of the virtues of living in the sticks.)
But wait! Maybe they actually do know about these quaint American festivals and the bizarre tourist traps you run into while driving through the vast American expanses. I picture Osama Bin Laden, just having picked up from the Discounted Cut-Out section, the coffee-table book of Charles Kuralt’s America. Thus, the skeptics will be proven wrong when the Amish Country Popcorn in Indiana explodes alongside the Sweetwater flea market in Tennessee.