A Ride Along New Hampshire Seacoast

 

Sunny, light breeze off the ocean, riding along Route 1A, the coastal two lane road provided a reminder of what brought Mad Dog to the New Hampshire seacoast, roughly 18 miles of blue gray ocean stretching from the coastal towns of Seabrook to Hampton to Rye to Portsmouth, a list of roughly ascending wealth and a journey from Trumpland, to a town so liberal that when Barack Obama won in the Presidency in 2008, the celebration in Portsmouth went on all night, including the Leftist Marching Band and dancing in the streets, while in the southern most town, Seabrook, deep gloom and despair. 

But riding along Route 111 to get down to the sea, you pass through pockets of Trumpiness. 

Runnymead Farm, home of the 1968 Kentucky Derby winner, Dancer's Image and a story of unblushing liberalism in that time, but now, right next door a display of Trumpish longing for that imagined lost paradise.

The story of Dancer's Image, is always bracing to Mad Dog. The story as Mad Dog recalls it is this: This New Hampshire horse won the Derby in 1968, an annus horribilis which included the assassination of Martin Luther King, cities alighting in flame, the Tet Offensive which demonstrated once and for all the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year, but for that one spark of light, suggesting there is a God in Heaven after all, looking down, and like some Greek God, taking a hand in events on Earth. 

The owner of the horse announced he was donating the winnings to Martin Luther King's Southern Leadership Conference. 

But you must remember the race was held in Kentucky, and somehow, several days after the race traces of phenylbutazone were found in the post race urine of this horse belonging to this man, Peter Fuller who had the temerity to take money the good people of Kentucky gave him and hand it over to the cause of racial equality and so the crown was rescinded.

Anyway, that's the way Mad Dog likes to think of the story and there are those who tell it that way.

But now, the neighboring farm owner recalls those halcyon days when a jury of white men could always be counted upon to find white men innocent of lynching black men, and to find a reason what we all saw happen, the horse coming home first, the Capitol assaulted by men wearing T shirts saying "The Civil War Begins Now," and finding that their boys were in the right (Right) and are now political prisoners,  and reality is what you want it to be, because, you know, you saw it on television, or people are saying or well, everyone knows they stole that election using absentee ballots or rigged voting machines.

My Flag is Bigger than Yours: I'm the Patriot

The Southland of Faulkner never could face the truth.