Sweat, Pollen, and Glory

It takes a bit of farm country driving, where the roads have limited lanes with unlimited curves. Your destination isn't the "gateway" to anything other than more of the same copses and cornfields you've been driving through. 

The speed limit drops immediately from 55 to 25 MPH, but this isn't a city. It's not a town. It's a village, and it's too small to support a police force that might patrol that speed limit change. But the sidewalks, porches, and slow-turtling rolling farm implements do the work instead.

Residents might number fewer than a thousand, but celebrating the Fourth of July is still important enough to plan a full day including a 5K run, breakfast in the park, a public worship service, bed races, a car show, parade and fireworks.

The crowd wasn't three-deep. The events were run mainly by shouts and waves. There were no reporters getting interviews. 

But it was enough to provide some young men and women the chance to design, cut, weld, and push in hopes of a victory covered in sweat, pollen, and glory.