A suburban street party

In my last post, I complained about missing the revelry that followed Thursday's announcement about gay marriage in some of the state's big cities.

I asked for a party, and I got it. The very next day we had a street party all our own - Manteca style.

And, uh, San Francisco? I bet YOUR party didn't have an army caravan and a mob full of old people in flag apparel!

The excitement had been brewing for weeks. The 118th Maintenance Company, a National Guard unit out of Stockton, was coming home from Iraq. After landing at the Stocktn airport, a motorcade of buses and camouflaged something-or-others would drive the soldiers through the streets of Manteca to a huge church, where they would undergo three days of "debriefing" - that is, therapy.

Manteca was abuzz. Volunteers woke up at 4 a.m. to erect thousands of streetside flags. Police laid out a plan to block off the streets. Somebody acting as spokesman even convinced (most) media outlets that the motorcade was traveling through Manteca, not because it was the logical route to the church that cut them a deal on their debriefing rental, but because Mantecans had sent SO MANY CARE PACKAGES to the 118th that this was their way of saying thanks.

Yes, this is the kind of event Manteca can really sink its teeth into.

ps, if you watch the above video to its dramatic conclusion, you'll hear that soldiers of the 118th received 1200 awards since they were deployed last July. Twelve hundred awards? Are you fucking joking? Clearly our Defenders are working very hard to distract our troops from thinking by giving them awards every time they take a crap. ("Great job, kid! You're on the right side!")

pps, this could be the post that gets me shot.