RED, WHITE & BLUE PANCAKES TOO!

July 16, 2018

Small towns often center around events. All you have to do is pick up a small-town newspaper and you’ll usually find them listed. They’ll be right around the page that announces the one-lane country bridges that are under water and the stray cat someone found down on Elm Street. That’s where I’m from. Small Town USA.

There’s the high school football games every Friday night where half the town will be cheering their home team on. Go Tigers. Homecoming which brings home alumni to don their pom poms and catch up with old friends. Annual arts and craft fairs where the townspeople display their handiwork they’ve worked on all year, and often a strawberry or watermelon festival. You may find a community band that plays in the band shell at the county park every Wednesday evening in the summer, and there’s a good chance a county fair that sets up for a week in the summer with fairway rides, corn dogs, cotton candy and livestock exhibitions. And of course, the annual parades.

Everyone loves a parade! Especially a small-town parade. They’re so intimate with all the locals touting their Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, businesses with their magnetic signs on their car door, homemade floats, town queens and princesses riding on the back of convertibles showing off their crowns, high school marching bands with majorettes and of course the politicians.

If you’ve ever worked on a parade float for an organization you belonged to, then you know how much fun it is. It’s the glue that holds you together. Meetings to plan the design, followed by more meetings to build the design and then more meetings to decorate the design. But the fun part is riding on the float and waving to all your friends and visitors on the sidelines who are watching.

Typically, there’s a shiny local firetruck and police car among other city service vehicles in a parade. But where do you find a parade that boasts a local police boat being pulled by the police boat pick-up truck down Main Street USA? On the Islands, some of the most fun parades of all. Small islands are intimate communities where everyone knows everybody!

This 4^th of July was a hard one for us. Our four granddaughters who lived down the street from us from the time the first one was born twelve years ago, moved to Tennessee the Saturday before the holiday. We were devasted. Our house was like a tomb. We didn’t want to do anything. I just kept saying I wanted to get away. Looking at all of their toys around the pool and finding little socks and hair bands was more than I could stand.

But there was an angel among us. My daughter-in-law, who is expecting our baby Gus in December, their first, insisted we go with her to get coffee at The Sanibel Bean on Sanibel Island and then watch their annual 4th of July parade. She’d bring the lawn chairs. Of course, her husband my son the fishing fanatic, was going fishing with a buddy. Frown. He really did need to destress.

Get up on a holiday at 6:00 AM? Ugh…doesn’t sound like fun to us but we couldn’t have her going alone…God works in mysterious ways….so we said we’d LOVE to. We met her just before the causeway, piled in our car and headed over the bridge to Sanibel. Just looking at the beautiful layers of blue water in this tropical paradise was worth the trip. And we live 20 minutes from this?

When you get over the causeway, which has sandy Gulf of Mexico beaches on both sides all the way, you come to a traffic light at Periwinkle. You’re on the island. Enter Small Town USA. Left takes you to the famous lighthouse where there’s great shelling. Straight takes you to the other coast with beautiful homes overlooking the ocean. Right takes you through the island, past the “town” of quaint shopping areas, restaurants, businesses and churches and straight to Captiva Island. Soon we saw the start of the festivities as people were setting up their chairs for the parade.

Parking is challenging on Sanibel on a good day, so we knew we had better mark our spot on the parade route. When we saw a group of lawn chairs lined up, we decided to pull over and stake our territory in any empty spot beside them. They were identical, and a gentleman was sitting in the one on the end. His name was Art. Art volunteered to watch our chairs while we went down the street to The Bean, a well-known coffee hangout on the island to get our delicious coffee. He then told me that there was a free All-You-Can-Eat Pancake and Sausage breakfast inside the church behind us. That put a smile on my husband’s face from ear to ear! When we got back with our coffee, we headed to the church to check it out.

That’s when we discovered the love-filled open arms of the people of Sanibel Community Church. Most of them were dressed in shorts and t-shirts, some wore aprons, but everyone wore a huge welcoming smile. The man at the door was hilarious, making jokes and inviting everybody in like he really wanted us there. The kind of person you feel like you’ve know your whole life and wouldn’t dare say no to.

Inside the music-filled large room, there were four or five lines set up with chafing pans full of homemade pancakes and sausages. There was another line for fresh fruit and coffee, juice and water were on tables along the sides. The large room was full of tables and there were more set up outside. People of all ages including swarms of happy festive kids filled the tables. Syrup and butter and accessories were on the tables and people were walking around with pans of more pancakes and sausage keeping our plates full.

There was a large decorated stage on one side. On it was a delightful gentleman at a microphone making announcements and welcoming everyone. Everywhere you went you were welcomed with a warm smile. These people were genuinely loving doing this for us. It was run like a well-greased machine. They told us they have done this every 4^th of July for years!

The food was delicious, but the hospitality was so warm and inviting you could feel the love in the room. These people were genuine. I didn’t want to leave. Maybe that’s why this little historical church that is so humble and quaint is the church attended by Vice President Pence when he visits Sanibel.

By the time we got back to our chairs, there were blankets and chairs everywhere. Everyone was wearing Red, White and Blue just like at the pancake breakfast! Flags and happiness was everywhere as people greeted their neighbors, and their visitors with big hugs.