Soar to Shore

Background Named for the town of Gilroy, California , the annual Gilroy Garlic Festiva l began in 1979 and is the town's top fundraiser. According to Wikipedia , then president of the local Gavilan College , visited a small town in France in which, as it called itself the "Garlic Capital of the World," hosted an annual garlic festival (potentially Beaumont-de-Lomagne or La Foire a l'ail Fume d'Arleux ). He brought the idea home, where the last-week-of July annual festival draws 80,000 - 100,000 people each year. If you neither live in Northern California nor are a garlic aficionado, then unfortunately you most likely learned about the Gilroy Garlic Festival in 2019 after a fatal domestic terrorist attack on its property. On its final day, shortly before closing, someone secretly entered the property wearing a bullet-proof vest, and armed with a WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle and 275 rounds. The gunman unleashed 39 rounds on festival-goers near an inflatable slide,...

Tonight I was driving home at dusk with a belly full of BBQ ribs to my temporary home of small town America on the fourth of July. I had seen online that the local fairgrounds would be setting off fireworks at 9:30 p.m.; and I, never carrying cash, was seeking an ATM where I could make a withdrawal for the fee at the gate to get in. I pulled off the highway in my town, the sun gone and just a faint orange glow breaking through the incredibly tall pine trees, when I noticed that along the embankm ent, a thick entanglement of tall grass, were a conglomeration of cars and lawn chairs - in the middle of virtually nowhere. I pulled off to the side of the highway, the one open spot, and looked around. Pick-up trucks with lawn chairs in the beds, SUVS, Miatas, dune buggies, motorcycles and more were the boulders among the pebbles of families gathered on picnic blankets, staring at the burnt-orange sky in anticipation. Despite all the warnings this past week fr om locals that the dry season wo...