bloggie blog

For Independence Day, I traveled to Utah. My motivation was to check in with my family again, and I got to see my dad and some sibs. While there, I partook in a small portion of America’s Freedom Festival. That’s right, America has a Freedom Festival, and it happens in Provo.

In my parents’ neighborhood, love of country was on display when I arrived from a Boy Scout’s Eagle project of several years ago: US flags flying in front of every house. At right, I reach out to it.

In my sister’s neighborhood, downtown Provo, which has a number of beautiful old homes, the parade happens. She lives one block from the route. Things are tame here, of course, so the 300,000 people who watched it do make for an unusual situation with rules and rule-breaking. The city put up red garbage cans per block, and post-parade the place was pretty durn clean. That’s love of country.

After the parade, at the Freedom Fair (I’m making that up, but it could be correct), we bought sunglasses and Tater Twists. Each plateful of Tater Twists is one russet potato sliced into one continuous curl — with a homemade gadget that involved, literally, a power drill for every potato — and then deep-fried to golden perfection. What a country!