No Rest for the Wicked

Pre-Dawn 

I woke up to shouting outside.  It was 5:30 on Sunday morning, still dark in April, and I could just make out the yelling, but not the actual words.  Who is shouting before dawn on a Sunday?  It’s against all the neighborhood “norms”.  Don’t cut your grass before 9am on Saturday, or 10am on Sunday.  We’re a working neighborhood, and those are the days where people try to catch up on sleep.  So shouting in the pre-dawn dark is, as Monty Python would say “right out”!

Our dogs are still asleep – if someone was shouting outside the dogs should be up and barking.  But there was our yellow lab’s head was still tucked in beside mine, and I could hear our older shepherd/collie mix gently snoring on the floor on my side of the bed.  The other two are quiet in the family room.

I got up and went to the front window. I pulled up the heavy blind, and there they were – my friends marching in the street outside of the house.  They had signs, and a bullhorn, yelling about not supporting their causes and betraying “Our Values”.  I thought – “They are standing in my yard, they can’t do that.  And there’s no sidewalk, so they’ll have to block the street to do continue their ‘protest’”.  That’s got to be illegal.

Legal Protest

One next door neighbor was out, talking to the marchers.  He offered them his yard to “legalize” the demonstration. But they said no, it wouldn’t work.  Our camper blocked the view of the house.  Good thing they came this morning – I hope that today we’ll sell the camper.  It might not be here to serve as a blockade tomorrow.

But I’d better call the prospective buyer.  Can’t have him drive three hours to check a camper in the middle of a protest.  We’ve been trying to sell the camper for more than a month, and now this protest is going to scuttle the sale. Damn, that was going to be a cash deal.

So maybe I need to call for help.  I need the authorities.  But who could I call, the police?  They were on the protest line as well, in uniform with a police dog!   Fat chance that they would “break up” the demonstration.  Maybe the Sheriff’s Department, but they were marching too, wearing their black and gray, pacing up and down my street.  Guess there’s no help there either.

It would be easy to shut the blinds, lock the doors, and turn up the music to try to drown them out.  But these were my friends, out there, shouting and demanding that we leave.  So I took one of the red folding chairs from the garage, and sat in the middle of the front yard.  If they were going to yell at us, well, here I am.  Yell at me.  It was just what we used to do when the Pataskala Parade came down our street – then it was a “front row” view of all of the horses.  Now, it was to this spectacle.

Being Neighborly

And then I had an even better idea.  I went and got a long white table from the storage shed in the back. I was going to go to Kroger’s and buy cookies, but there wasn’t a way to get out of the driveway to go anywhere.  A big black SUV, like a Secret Service car, blocked the end.   So  I quickly (really quickly) made cookies in the kitchen.  They were done and cooled almost instantly, and I found a case of water in the garage (when did we buy that?).  

I went to the end of the driveway,  beside the SUV.  And I set up the table, offering plates of cookies and bottles of water to the protestors, like I was a water stop on a road race.   It seemed like the “neighborly” thing to do.

Then the Sheriff’s Deputies came up and arrested me – handcuffing me against the Black SUV.  It was against the law to feed or give water to protestors in the street.

Someone jumped on me –

Just Light

And I woke up to our younger rescue dog, the only female. It was a little after six on Sunday morning – and time for her to go out, and patrol the back yard. Her morning ritual is to jump up on the bed and demand a morning snuggle as her first duty of the day.

It was all a dream.  There was no shouting outside, no picket line in the street.  Just the cold early light of an April morning, and the dreams of someone who has spent time thinking about our world today.  

My wife and I have talked a lot about it – and how different our views are than those around us.  Our neighbors, friends and town has been pretty “tolerant” of having an “openly liberal” family here.  With only a couple exceptions, we made it through two Presidential campaigns without incidence.  But Biden’s election didn’t  seem to “make things better” as far as the neighborhood is concerned.

It’s like some have just “dug in” in their views even more than before.  It’s not just the stubborn “Trump for America” signs that still “grace” several yards.  And it’s not even the “F##K BIDEN” banner that hangs from a suburban front porch nearby. It feels like conversations that we could have, even before the election, are no longer possible  The “chat on the street” or the offer to “wander down for a beer” no longer occurs.  It all feels wrapped in an aura of betrayal – “how could you believe that”.

But we do – and we try not to put our views too much in our neighbors’ “faces”. That is, other than the Biden signs during the election – still stored in the garage. One fell on my head yesterday. Maybe it takes getting hit on the head to discover what I’m really worried about.

The dogs don’t go back to bed in the morning.  And as my Mom would say – “no rest for the weary”. Or was it”no rest for the wicked?”  

So here’s my Sunday story.