Old and New

The drum beat filled the air, the sound of a snare with a two hundred year old design. It is a snare meant to sound like the one which would be used to relay orders from General Washington's lips. The drum kept playing when even the wind was silent.

The parade had gone well, the Plymouth Fife and Drum Corp even split and came together with a little flourish at the median which divined the route through Tecumseh. More importantly, the heat, which accumulates in their red and blue wool uniforms, did not cause any of them to fall out. Now it was just the wreath laying ceremony, which I'm told was were we lost four last year and seven the year before. I start my time focused more on the kids, especially mine, and less on the wreaths.

That attention, though, shifted when it is clear the kids are ok and they are involved in something important.

The PFDC dresses as George Washington's personal lifeguards, his personal detachment. They look like some of the very first Americans who fought to become Americans. Some of the very first who died trying to become Americans. In uniform, the hat and coat, vest and breeches, neck stock and old man shoes, as Savannah calls them, they are not to smile. The emulate the stern expression you associate with the commander himself. As much as this might mean to them, it means more to the servicemen who are there. They see a connection the kids do not.

I watch from behind a light grey headstone in the cemetery marked Vietnam, 1959-1975. The speaking has stopped but the drum marks time for the soldiers laying wreaths. The crowd parts and I see the ones who will honor those who died in this war. On one side is a man, who the speaker has just told us served and received medals of honor in Vietnam. He places this wreath for the friends he lost there. He is an old man honoring a new war. Beside him is a girl from the Corp, she is probably 15 or 16, a drummer, which I only know because her harness shows white on her blue jacket. It is hard for her to honor the men who died in Vietnam because she doesn't know much about it, but she honors the man beside her.