A Small Town's Independence Day
For God and Country and ham sandwiches on beaten biscuits
If you’re anywhere near East Bend, North Carolina, and it happens to be Independence Day, you’re welcome to crash its celebration. The town was once famous for making more buggies in North Carolina than anywhere else. The most popular model, the HMT (aka Hug-Me-Tight), was sort of a sporty two-seater contraption favored by bachelors. The factory closed in 1920 when the country roads were overtaken by automobiles. Undulating mounds of kudzu indicate lost tobacco farms, the rusted tin roofs of houses and barns poking through the dense vines.
You’ll probably come in along Route 67 and then turn off onto Main Street until the town peters out. The most interesting piece of real estate is a stone marker with a plaque depicting Daniel Boone resting against his long gun. Erected around 1913, it indicates the Boone Trail Highway that runs along places associated with his life.
The full name of East Bend’s July 4th celebration is the East Bend God & Country Celebration. Flags fly from lampposts, patriotic bunting and swag decorate the few buildings in the business district where residents set up folding chairs to watch the parade. They’re nice enough to invite strangers to share a step while asking why they might have been enough interested in joining the festivities to have traveled from so far away .
Suddenly there’s a rippling of cheers as the first float appears carrying veterans from the last 56 years of war, followed by shiny farm tractors, the local fire department, and imposing Army Humvees and camouflaged Jeeps. Children in an old Huff buggy and a couple of convertibles advertising local businesses bring up the rear. Uncle Sam waves everyone toward the direction of the elementary school’s playing field.
The menu from the 1941 celebration included the following:
Baked country ham, fried country ham, baked meat loaf, fried chicken, and roast beef. Slaw, pickled beets, cucumber pickles (sour, sweet, and grape leaf). Potato salad, chicken salad, pimentos, cream cheese, cottage cheese, pickles, relishes. Several types of sandwiches. Deviled and boiled eggs. Twenty-seven varieties of cake baked by the ladies of the local churches and Quaker Meeting House. Pies: Apple, peach, berry, pumpkin, sweet potato, custard, lemon, and coconut. Baking powder biscuits, beaten biscuits, sliced light bread. Lemonade and iced tea.
Today’s menu is more limited. People are busy, funds are scarce. The local diner offers kielbasas, locally cured ham, and fresh lemonade. The Quaker Meeting House and Yadkin Christian Ministry grill good hot dogs and thick hamburger patties. A table full of homemade pies keep cool as much as everyone else can under the deepest shade spread out below old acorn trees. The ham served on beaten biscuits is worth the long drive from wherever you were before.
The crowd settles down with full plates in time for the talent contest, mostly young girls imitating their favorite pop stars. A teenager reads the winning essay contest on what the phrase “God and Country” means. One of the town’s gospel groups stirs a few in the audience to raise their hands in praise. Others seem to take the singers as a sign to pack up and go home.
The afternoon stills under a thick batting of humidity. Not even the highest branches in the acorn trees stir. Those who remain stretch out in camp chairs or across blankets, some with sweaty babies dozing on their chests, others keeping lazy watch over the older children in a large bounce house or riding on very tired-looking ponies. A squad of teasing girls vie for the best cartwheels across the thick grass. The town’s teenagers have long since drifted back to the Subway parking lot near the town’s border. With feline grace, they pace along the highway’s shoulder, impatient for the black July sky to explode.
