A joke is told about the time that Brezhnev was showing his mother around a swanky new dacha (summer cottage) he had obtained, and she was getting increasingly worried as the tour continued. He finally asked her what was wrong, and she said, “But Leonid, what if the communists come back?”
Doug Wilson, in his July 31 article “On Shooting Your Way Out”, blog and mablog
Brr. I don’t think it’s much of a joke at all.
“The bright yellow flowers give way to a grapelike cluster of purple berries with whitish coating. In the fall, some of the leaves often turn bright red, orange, or bronze.
“The tart berries make a refreshing, lemonade-like drink and fine jelly or wine. The yellow inner bark was used by Native Americans as a yellow dye and as a medicine with many applications.”
(Falcon Guide, p. 121)
Here was our sales booth at this year’s American Falls Days. We did OK. I sold two Long Guests and my son sold some paintings.
Here are a few other vendors, visible from our corner of the park. The Navajo Tacos are to die for: basically taco fixins on fry bread. I get some every year.
Vendors were ringed all around the city park, with food trucks parked on the street.
Also, there was this adorable dog, the tiniest sheep dog I have ever seen.
But the kickoff event for American Falls Days was the town parade. If you have never seen a summer parade in small-town America, may I just say you are missing out. I had to stay in our booth while the parade went by. (My son, meanwhile, went off to collect candy. All the floats threw candy.) Anyway, I was close enough to the street that I could zoom in and photograph the parade from a distance, as if in miniature. So here’s your guided tour.
First of all, we have veterans bearing an American flag and a state flag.
This float belongs to Lamb Weston, a potato-processing plant and a major local employer. Near the front of the float you can see a giant box of French Fries. At the back is a giant potato with a face and, apparently, black hair, similar to Mr. Potato Head.
Lots of little golf-cart sized vehicles that you can barely see.
a trolley (?)
Politicians in open cars with flags. What parade would be complete without them?
The local Tae Kwon Do dojong’s float, with all the students in their doboks riding it.
Other students parade behind, doing poomsae moves.
I’m not sure who these purple-clad, Muppet-like people are, but they’re interesting.
Here’s a little yellow school bus. I know someone who would love this!
Now here come the utility vehicles. Fire truck, siren blaring …
Crop transport vehicle, a.k.a. “farm truck”
Teen volunteers riding on a ladder truck (siren also blaring) …
Senior citizens (your parade has to have them!) in a giant Radio Flyer
High schoolers (also mandatory)
A boat? What are people in Idaho doing with boats??? For your information, we have a reservoir, and many people boat recreationally on it.
Beauty queens. Every parade needs at least one beauty queen.
Classic car. The owner probably just wanted to show it off.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think this yellow thing may represent a bee hive. That’s a popular Mormon symbol for a large, happy (polygamous) home.
This is the coolest thing ever. Those large wheels are irrigation lines of the kind that you can spot in any field around American Falls. If you look closely, you can see that they are spraying actual water.
ACTUAL WATER!!!
Trailer, for some reason
This float was by the local Spanish-speaking evangelical church. They had a Tejano-style praise band, with speakers, loud enough to be heard past the sirens.
After the parade, they brought their float back, parked it in a nearby parking lot, and did some more songs and testimonies.
Being pulled behind the band is a small model of their church building.
This is the Green Machine. It had an entourage of people dressed in green marching behind it.
Now, for my absolute favorite float of all the floats. This is the Idaho Power cherrypicker truck. It’s the one they send out to our rural road to fix our power lines and restore electricity whenever a storm has blown the lines down, which has happened more than once. The brave Idaho Power employees will go out in winds and storm to restore power.
And look! It’s displaying a huge American flag, which strikes me as entirely appropriate. A local power company is indeed doing a lot to keep the country strong. If the power went off for any length of time, the region or country would quickly disintegrate into apocalyptic conditions. A nation needs its energy so its people can focus on anything except survival.
I’m not sure what the towerlike object on this float is, but I think it might be a model of the old town’s grain tower.
The town of American Falls used to be built closer to the banks of the Snake River. When the dam was built, the entire town was moved uphill, out of the way of the waters of the coming reservoir. (A lot of Shoshone-Bannock lands were also flooded.) To this day, when the water is low, you can still see the remains of the old town’s foundations. The most striking of these is a cement grain tower, which still sticks out of the water year-round. You can gauge the water level by how high up the tower it comes, or whether the tower is, in fact, on the shore.
A piece of construction equipment holding a beam. We small-town folks love our construction equipment.
And of course, a John Deere tractor. One of many.
And last but not least, beautiful cowgirls riding horses and carrying an American flag. These girls may be Indians. One year, the parade featured the Sho-Ban rodeo queen riding a horse, with a leather “crown” that fitted over her cowboy hat.
I’ve taken a lighthearted tone with this post, but honestly, I loved this parade and I love this town. Every community has parades to celebrate the things they love or that they are being made to love, whether it’s Dear Leader or a god or goddess. In this parade, we had: old people, young people, first responders, and people and vehicles who build, maintain, power, and farm the land. Horses. A float dedicated to praising the God of Heaven and proclaiming His goodness. This is just about the best, most wholesome parade you could ever hope to see.
As of the taking of these pictures.
It may seem strange to call the aspen tree a flower, but it does appear in my Falcon Guide Central Rocky Mountain Wildflowers.
“Aspen’s leaves (as distinct from birches’) are rounded or heart-shaped in outline, with vertically flattened pettioles (leaf stalks) that are responsible for their distinctive trembling, rotating action in the slightest breeze.
“Aspen is a colonial tree that spreads by shallow underground stems. Patches of aspen trees are often just vertical stems (clones) of a single genetic individual. The borders of the clone patches are often obvious in the spring and fall, when the genetic differences in leafing out and fall coloration are expressed between clone patches. The underground stems enable aspen to survive forest fires with ease. Aspen twigs are a favorite food for browsing deer, elk, and moose, especially in winter.” (page 246)
Here’s a path leading past Silver Sage into an aspen grove (clone patch? Or between clone patches? I’m sticking with grove – sounds less disturbing).
Still used as a hotel, it has four levels that soar over the lobby with its massive stone fireplace. Supports on the balconies are made of natural tree limbs.
It’s the kind of place that could be creepy, but on our midsummer visit there, I did not find it so. There is a lot of natural light, and the space was obviously designed for a lot of people and is still being used that way. I think that’s why.
The window with a walkway in front of it, visible at the top center of this picture, looks directly out at Old Faithful. This part of the catwalk is now off-limits to all but private tours.
And here’s why.
The Crow’s Nest is the birdhouse-like structure tucked in the darkness at the very top of this photo.
Some parts of the hotel are more modern, but here is one of the old parts.
This is not a paid promotion, by the way. I wish!
I think I may have managed to photograph a flower that is “endemic to this area and found nowhere else in the world.”
White Frasera, according to my Falcon Guide, is “found in the montane forests of central and west-central ID” (page 209). Citadel of Rocks, where I found this, doesn’t technically fit the bill, since it is in the southern part of the state. Other possible candidates are Black Elderberry and Edible Tobacco Root.
It’s an older Asian couple taking each other’s picture in front of a teepee, in Yellowstone.
I also saw a Pakistani family doing the same thing, which was also super cute.
I can’t remember who it was, but one commentator I listen to pointed out, in response to the move to take American Indians out of team names and products, that American Indians are famous all over the world.
Anyway, I’m here at Yellowstone with the fam and it’s very international here. Languages I heard in the space of a few hours:
They all came to see Old Faithful, the geyser. Even more faithful than old faithful were the people. We all came at the time it was predicted to blow. We all sat quietly, as if at church, except that occasionally someone would say, “It’s starting! It’s starting!” – and it would be a false alarm.
When Old Faithful did demonstrate its power once again, we all raised our phones in unison, and faithfully recorded it.
The human kindness continued the next day at this lookout point (veiwing Grand Teton peak), reachable by tram from Teton Village. 10,450 feet in the air, we faithfully offered to take each other’s family photos in front of the panorama, exchanging phones and then giving them back.
Human beings can be faithful, and kind, for a couple of days while on vacation.
The One who made the mountains is faithful forever.
PSA: I’m not doing off-the-grid August this year. You guys need a place to come where you can look at wildflowers and read about aliens. (So restful, right?) And I have enough pictures of the West to show you guys aaallll month.
So if I stop posting, it’s either because WordPress has bugged out on me, or the entire Internet has. Which are both things that could happen.
Until then, see you in the dog days!
Out of Babel Books 