Waitsburg, Washington had no reason to feel crestfallen.
It wasn’t as if the parade wouldn’t return. The Eagle Scouts up on the float would be back next year.
At the head of the parade, America’s oldest pickup truck trembled along, an International Harvester model built in 1907, owned by a collector in Hermiston, Oregon.
A rodeo queen of rare intelligence presided over the parade. She was about to leave Waitsburg, Washington for her freshman year at UCLA.
Her father, a prosperous wheat farmer, had taught her to solve problems in her sleep. Not to yearn for a solution but simply to define the problem.
Most folks in Waitsburg figured she was destined for great things.
