A Part of America

Adrienne and I went down to Wheeling.

We went with a group of friends, to the No Kings protest.

When Adrienne was little, during the first Trump administration, she organized her teddy bears into a picket line to imitate the one I was watching on the news, and asked me to write out “WE WILL NOT LISTEN” on a construction paper sign. About eight years later, I found myself riding in the back of a friend’s SUV, next to Adrienne who is a little taller than me, on a trip to Wheeling, to protest that same President Trump.

We went down Route 7, complaining as we did that the fall color wasn’t so good this year, with all the droughts. But it was still beautiful: beautiful just to be there, in the sunshine, in the late morning, with friends.

People say all kinds of things about this part of America. But they don’t tell you how lovely it can be in Autumn.

Wheeling is a beautiful city, but it’s terribly confusing to drive in. It’s like a miniature Pittsburgh with none of the intersections at right angles. I was glad not to be the driver. We eventually found our way to the corner where other protesters were already setting up, on the other side of a historic bridge, the Elm Grove bridge, built in 1817. Of course, I stopped to take a picture and read the historical marker. I am always fascinated to read a historical marker. I like to think about the people who were living on this spot when the structure being marked out was young, and all the people who have come and gone on this spot since then. If the whole country  falls into ruin and I live through it, and anybody asks me, “What do you miss the most about America?” I will probably say “reading all those historical markers, and thinking about them.”

The bridge was built in 1817, when this part of America belonged to Virginia and not West Virginia. Wheeling itself was built much earlier, in 1769, when this piece of land was the property of England. Before that, it belonged to the Mingo and the Delaware, the Shawnee and the Wyandot. Before that, there must have been Adena here, because they buried their dead just a few miles away in Moundsville. Before that, long before, the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia were part of the Central Pangean Mountains. Those mountains were full of peat swamps, which is why this part of America is made of coal– coal is the carbon left over when dead peat is buried for eons.

I think about all of these things every time I go to West Virginia.

We set up our signs at the corner of Route Forty, which used to be a path the Native Americans used, and was later part of the National Road established by President Jefferson. I had expected one or two hundred people, from Eastern Ohio and West Virginia, as this part of the country is deep red. But we ended up with nearly a thousand. There were white, Black, and brown people. There were elderly retirees with walkers. There were young men dressed as Revolutionary War soldiers. There were people whose placards declared they were members of Catholic and Protestant churches. There were protesters in silly inflated suits that looked like penguins and cartoon characters. There was one lady in a keffiyeh and several people in the red triangular bandanas that miners wore at Blair Mountain. There was a drag queen dressed as the Statue of Liberty, and she complimented my “Christians Resist Christian Nationalism” sign. Somebody passed out little American flags, and we all found ways to hold them along with our protest signs. It was chaos. It was silliness. It was America.

We started out by singing the Star-Spangled Banner and pledging allegiance to the flag. And then the chanting started: loud, badly organized chanting on both sides of the four-lane road. We chanted in favor of immigrants and the Constitution, of releasing the Epstein Files and enforcing the law. Cars honked their horns as they drove by– some waving and giving us a thumbs up, and only a handful of people jeering.

“You hate America,” yelled a heckler as he sped by in a pickup truck.

“We love America!” I insisted.

Next thing I knew, the lady passing around the megaphone handed it to me. The next heckler to yell from his pickup truck got me, reciting “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” into the bullhorn at him, and didn’t seem to know what to make of it.

I led a few chants, but I am not good at chants.  I am good at singing, so I started to sing.

I sang into the bullhorn. Adrienne sang along, as did others.  We sang “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.” We sang “Rally Round the Flag, Boys” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  “Almost Heaven, West Virginia.” “This Land is Your Land, this Land is My Land.” “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round.”

I looked at the people in the red bandanas, and sang “Solidarity Forever.”

Somebody else took a turn at the megaphone, and I sat down for awhile.

Overhead was that bright, clear, brilliant blue firmament. On all sides were the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, the last dull green speckled with orange and gold. To my back was Wheeling Creek, with the 1817 Elm Grove Bridge. In front of me was the way to Moundsville and that ancient Adena monument. To my right was the Ohio river, flowing south into the Mississippi to the gulf. To my left was Adrienne, as exhausted as I was, sitting on the grass.

Just then, I felt that I was a part of history.

Just then, I felt that I really loved my country.

I felt that I was a part of America.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.