As Easter began to close down, like a defender in March Madness for Michigan kicking U-Conn, the signs still could be seen heading out on the highway, like Jesus in and around Emmaus of old.
The man-of-right-age as a driver wore a T-shirt on Monday, the next day, that I think was for a metal band, and could have been either a stick figure with slim limbs and thick torso ready for a spear to come and sitting in a chair, or Christ on the cross bent over a bit sideways, like he’d been forced to haul that awful tree too far. Where is a disciple when you need one? Ask Peter about that.
While we’re headed sideways, sorta, let’s go back to very late on Easter Sunday. We were able to find an open retail store at that time, and encountered the coolest clerk, a black woman and that is important why? She rocked it with both dark brown and bright white eight-inch bunny ears. I had just visited a nursing home, Catholic by nature, but there was no Easter vigil or otherwise Mass, as they — big surprise — couldn’t find the proper clergy. “Someone get me a priest …”
But there were churches to be found all along our new route, and some had their worship services advertised, and still up on Monday, on digital signs along the way. Call them e-churches? One noted both the “death” of the crucifixion and the rising from the dead and returning to “life.” There was a slash mark, appropriate, slightly sideways through most of “death,” but also a letter or two of “life.” Referencing Emmaus and Iron Maiden again, it this time was not Death on the Road, but Live after Death.
On another spring topic, the opening, via the opening day, of baseball has arrived. It’s about that time in April, I always want to say The Third. But wait, and I should plead The Fifth, again looking sideways, they’ve moved up the opener into the days already passed of late March. The Brew Crew, sayeth mom from Milwaukee, already has played to the crowd a few times. At home? Does global warming allow this? And make it harder to keep your Miller Lite cold while in the stands, if lower level box seats, away from the chill factors of wind.
And of course today is election day, the greatest day I’ve ever known. Hudson was again flooded with School Board bid signs, normally a much less contentious election, in any normal city. “Throw da bums out, they can’t read. That’s vital in this one.” In neighboring New Richmond, there was nary a sign to be found for Their Version Of The Board, save a few in the downtown. The taxi driver is from that city of going on 10,000, and said that in early voting, a week beforehand, he was pushing 800 with the total numbers of city ballots cast at the time. Huh? There is that draw of the far more state-widely prominent, Supreme Court race, for which the turnout was checkered, as could be seen in a smattering of early, empty parking spaces at the Hudson Town Hall. But wait, the back lot was seen full to the brim once people started getting off of work and the commuters hit. The rub of all this? On the way to New Richmond, going from the downtown with no “No Kings” protesters on this day, the first flag I saw displayed was in a yard devoid of any other kind of political consideration. There would be many dozens of School Board placards starting already in the next block. And a church had only the most basic of partisan placard. Just “Tuesday. Go vote.” That “traffic” meant there were county deputies operating speed traps everywhere by manning the highway side areas. Taking orders from those politically up high?
A final, for now, sideways look. There is what, (re)construction underway in the big main parking lot between the St. Croix River and the downtown, crane and construction vehicles present and all, with the concrete patio platform next to the iconic Pier 500 restaurant turned into, for now, a great big pile of gravel and sand, (for your kids to play in? No, I think not.) All forming that slash we’ve talked about, in this case, a slightly diagonal division near the middle formed by a median of fencing and cones.
But there’s nothing sideways about this election result. In the city of New Richmond, a referendum question was passed by residents with a “yes” vote by a large margin, on a binding continuation of fluoridating municipal drinking water, by 1,666 to 942. This could be seen as a mandate against RFK Jr. and conspiracy spinners.