Secession Year

Grange doesn't break away with rifles; it votes in a VFW hall and then goes for pie. The town paper's editor-our first-person witness-prints the headline and keeps the minutes as civic life gets handmade: a provisional cabinet with posted hours; a bedsheet flag; a tax jar; and a border sign whose dare and welcome are the same: YOU ARE NOW LEAVING YOU. The joke gets serious in the best way. People slow down. Forms appear. So do rules that sound like kindness. A pie-token currency (Slice, Two...