Banners featured on the back of owner-operator
March 2, 2022, Monrovia, Indiana
I stopped for the serious-looking flag lady with the orange vest just as soon as she raised her hand. We were about to enter the spacious confines of Ted Everett Farm Equipment in Monrovia, Indiana, a town of around 1,100, about 20 minutes west of Indianapolis.
Her tone was grave, her demeanor stern, belied only by her Indiana twang: "The speed limit is now one half mile an hour! We've had two or three people get nudged just today."
I nodded gravely. We eased in. She was right. The place was a madhouse. I tried to keep it below five. It was around one in the afternoon. There were people milling about, kids running everywhere. An orgy of flags greeted us to our left, commending our current president to the copulative act in more ways than 20th-century literary provocateur Henry Miller himself could conjure. There were around 850 or more cars, campers and vans. I'd never seen so many bumper stickers in one place, anywhere.
We finally found a parking space and began walking the rows, counting the cars. I should have worn my Merrells. It took a while before we started seeing the trucks. The place was part county fair, part tailgate party, replete with food trucks, traveling evangelists and buskers playing for tips.
Finally, we found the pavilion, then the trucks. There were the remnants of the old USTA, who we covered here in the Over the Road podcast coproduction with PRX’s Radiotopia, among other places. Mike Landis was there, his 1999 Peterbilt cabover hooked to a flatbed which would serve as a stage for a rally later that evening. Brian Brase, former communications director for that organization, bullhorn in hand, was leading an air-horn choir, whose decibels would put AC/DC to shame.
Brase, with megaphone, leading the choir.
