Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
Permalink

November 28
2334 Hrs
Bakersfield, CA
Hotel room in Las Vegas

Our Bakersfield Rally was at a Wal-Mart downtown. It was a really weird situation too because local TV wanted to do some interviews with Buzz Patterson and Debbie Lee (they wanted Deborah Johns as well, but she had another commitment which meant she had to leave the tour, to return at a future location) at like 4 o’clock in the morning and then on and on throughout the morning until the rally was actually set to begin at 8.

So last night, after we arrived at the hotel in Bakersfield, our driver Chris (who you will meet at some point in these blogs) took the bus to the parking lot of the Wal-Mart where the rally was set to be and left it there, hitching a ride home in the Hertz® SUV we rented (a Dodge Durango®—can you tell I like the ® symbol?) so that the bus would be present as a backdrop at 4 am when Debbie and Buzz arrived.

I on the other hand, slept in like a baby and got down to the lobby of the hotel around 7:30 where we had a some breakfast and were ferried to the Wal-Mart where the crowd was waiting.

We also had Lyman show up with his cougar. His car is so awesome, I don’t know exactly the year, I think it has to be a 70-72 but it’s painted in patriotic colors and called “the spirit of allegiance” in protest of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the Pledge of Allegiance should not include the line ‘under God’.  Lyman drove up to Bakersfield and went on to Barstow with us.

We also had plenty of Wal-Mart employees come out and sign cards and donate, and they took pictures with Lyman’s car. It was really a lot of fun. Buzz and Debbie gave their speeches, and Diana sang “Where Freedom Flies” which everyone loves. I noticed we had a couple retired vets in full uniform and they talked to Buzz quite a bit. We had several tv cameras, including a Spanish-language news station.

I was really happy with how well the T-Shirts and Books were going too, everyone wanted the and everyone was pretty generous in making donations, when they could afford to! The only problem I had was that this tour we decided to make T-shirts, sweatshirts (crew neck) and also hoodie sweaters, and each of those were in 5 different sizes. So that’s 15 different combinations of size and type, and that made it really hard to find the right one, I had to keep running back and forth to the back of the bus or to the van to pick up a t-shirt or sweater size that we didn’t have out at the table. We’ll have to figure that out later.

There was one really funny moment at this rally too, that I have to tell you all about. So we are all sitting in the bus, SUV and the van, ready to get on the road, and just as we’re about to pull out, this guy walks up to the side of the bus and strikes up a conversation with Chris our driver through the tiny little window of the drivers side of the bus. Ryan gets up to go find out who’s bothering our new friend, and this guy starts asking Ryan about where we are going and if he can get on the bus with us, it was totally weird, he might have been homeless. But somehow he also found out that we’re trying to send a delegation to Iraq, and he wanted to go there too. It was crazy…like who is this guy, he thinks he can just go to Iraq…for what, no reason…. he just wants to go to Iraq. I guess he’s bored with America? Who just does that!?! Well finally we had to let this guy know, hey, we’re kinda late and…we can’t just take people to Iraq when we don’t even know if we ourselves can go for sure yet! Eventually we successfully got back on the road and headed towards Barstow!

E-mail any questions/comments/corrections to mafbloggerdanny@gmail.com. Thank you for reading