Our Annual Memorial Day celebration is essentially a community tradition that includes a parade in which a color guard, town officials, a few uniformed soldiers, and a dwindling group of old veterans try to keep step. Kids march and ride on floats. Fire trucks, ambulances, and antique cars roll by. And townspeople crowd along the route to applaud and smile and call out to their friends and relatives in the parade. Then everybody crowds around a monument and a microphone. Awards are given to outstanding school kids. Rifles are fired in a salute to the dead soldiers, and bugles echo the sad, lonely notes of “Taps”. A prayer is lifted to the heavens. And Hampton ponders the meaning of Memorial Day.

John Woodworth, Memorial Day, 1998