This morning, while mowing my lawn, my neighborhood had a parade since there isn’t going to be a big one downtown. Immediately, I thought of David Foster Wallace’s October 2001 Rolling Stone essay, “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s.” on September 11.
Everybody has flags out. Homes, businesses. It’s odd: You never see anybody putting out a flag, but by Wednesday morning there they all are. Big flags, small flags, regular flag-size flags. A lot of home-owners here have those special angled flag-holders by their front door, the kind whose brace takes four Phillips screws. And thousands of those little hand-held flags-on-a-stick you normally see at parades – some yards have dozens all over as if they’d somehow sprouted overnight. Rural-road people attach the little flags to their mailboxes out by the street. Some cars have them wedged in their grille or duct-taped to the antenna. Some upscale people have actual poles; their flags are at half-mast.
Funny enough, I snickered that he was writing this from Bloomington, Illinois, and I’m writing this from Bloomington, Indiana.
Then I almost mowed over the desiccated corpse of a rabbit that may have been laying dead on my yard all week since returning from Michigan on Wednesday.
I hope you’re having a great day.
David Press 