AddieStan

Independence Day Washington Blade On Independence Day in Merrimack, New Hampshire, the floats and convertibles and flatbed trucks festooned in red, white and blue are lining up in the parking lot of Zyla’s, a sort of garden shop/hardware store on the Daniel Webster Highway. There’s another half hour to go before the official start, an excercise the people of Merrimack perform annually, but one I view only every four years. For on the quadrennial, the candidates contending for primacy in the New Hampshire primary invariably show up, taking their places amid the marching bands, Girl Scout troops, Cub Scout packs and Rotarian floats, hoping to win the hearts of those who populate New Hampshire’s largest single voter precinct. It isn’t even noon yet, and the temperature has far surpassed the 90-degree mark. “Global wahr-ming,” says my friend Chuck, goofing on a flat-lander’s idea of a New Hampshire accent. A vociferouslly literate institution of civic activism in that gi...