“The Ten Commandments is based on what this country was made of.”
This from one of the protestors, unhappy the Mosaic tablets are gone
this year from the courthouse lawn where they’ve been admonishing
the faithful—a chiseled anaphora of Thou shall not’s on a monument
as squat as a tombstone. I said we’ve made a graven image of the flag,
a joss of private property. “No way,” he told me. “‘In God We Trust.’
It’s right there on the dollar.” That must be why it’s called Almighty,
I joked, but he wasn’t sure about that. Were “Limousine Liberals” next,
or would it be the Second Amendment? Then I remembered how all
those years I spent thumbing around the country, it was people like him
who gave me rides, sometimes even springing for a meal. People like
you see on the local news, having hauled some perfect stranger from
an all-but-totaled car, their shaken neighbors from a house fire.
Copyright 2017 Robert Gibb
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Robert Gibb