I looked over to my old bedside Timex and saw that it was eleven already. I began to untangle myself from my bedsheets and curse the sun. The glorious town of Boonsboro did not lack the drive that evaporated in the vortex of my bedroom. For at least two hours already, families had been standing among semi-sellable goods and hustling strangers with light conversation to lure them in. They call it “Boonesborough Days.”
For fifty-four years, the weekend after Labor Day has been an opportunity for the town to celebrate its heritage. I don’t know how it was done in 1971, but in 2025, the legacy of Boonsboro consists of a couple streets lined with garage sales and a park full of randomly assorted vendors.
As some poor fool was succumbing to the siren song of suburban small-talk in a Boonsborian family’s driveway, I was just getting out of bed. I got as far as pulling up yesterday’s jeans and stretching a Star Wars tee over my head before some irritating vibrations of the psychic and physical kind drew me back onto the half-drawn bedspread. I felt a deep, guttural dread before I ever heard the buzzes reverberating through the springs in my mattress.
Phone calls make me extremely nervous, and FaceTime calls are nearly impossible to cope with. But only nearly. Since my sister’s moved out, she’s been touching base more and more frequently, and I don’t mind at all. She misses home, and I miss her. She keeps the FaceTimes quick, too.
She was calling to make sure I was awake. She had texted me only a minute beforehand to invite me to go to Boonesborough Days with her and her boyfriend, Johnny. Despite my hesitance when it comes to being among large crowds of the native population of my town, I have had a strange fixation with garage sales since childhood. I would beg my mom to swerve into any we drove by because I was scared to miss out on something so temporary. An annual celebration lacks this anxiety of the fleeting, true, but I’m impatient. So Boonesborough Days it was.
Within the hour I was fed, groomed, and clear-minded enough to step over the doorframe into the driveway. When I was halfway out the door, my sister called to my grandfather (colloquially, The Big Dick; formally, Pappy) and asked, “Is there anything you want us to look for?”
There was a beat of silence before we heard him call back from his bedroom: “Naw… it’s all junk.”
Pappy took us in some six years ago, when strenuous conditions at my home drove my sister and I packing our things and winding up the mountain. I had definite reservations about moving to Boonsboro. I had the impression that it was a hick-town with hick kids who would definitely not get down with who I was. Hell, “who I was” barely flew in Middletown, and they just built a new library.
From my first day in Boonsboro to the day I write this, I have never quite known what to make of the population. The quality of the school surprised me, but my peers made my low expectations seem like a very easy game of limbo. They couldn’t even bully me right. Two of my peers resembled living dumptrucks in their size and their dress.
They would pass me in class or in the halls and whisper, “Uh-awwwh… there’s that gay kid…” and I could never take much offence. If you don’t have enough hate in your heart to call me a faggot–or at least a queer–don’t even open your mouth to speak ill of me.
Growing up in this environment clearly has a detrimental effect on the folks that never moved away, as even adult Boonsborians are not keen on casual conversation, or even pleasant smiles between strangers. While they make sure to maintain a small-town aesthetic by keeping rude passing remarks to an absolute minimum, they let their eyes leak all the venom that pools in their dried little hearts. It’s a strange form of apathy towards even hatred that infects the more conservative type of people who populate the town.
But the liberal type of person doesn’t fare much better. While more outwardly friendly for sure, they’re understandably on edge. In a town where nazi crowds can stand outside the park with images of politicians sucking on huge, filth-ridden phalluses in the name of protecting children from obscenity, they have to approach every social interaction with a healthy amount of caution. It’s impossible to tell if any plainsclothes teenage boy is the kind to pick up what his parents put down, or if he’s some overly ambitious wannabe freedom fighter that seems to permeate left-leaning youth culture in this part of the country.
But there are still those among them who remain unbothered. The bravest of these inhabitants put out yard signs with radical statements like “Hate Has No Home Here” and “Love is Love.”
None of these signs were present in the first neighborhood we stopped at. We had driven up and down a couple streets at this point, and stumbling out into the ditch Johnny had parked in was certainly preferable to a second more spent in the backseat. I was the only living thing back there–I hope–but it was so full of old newspapers (left in piles from a job he quit a year prior) and a nearly mountainous buildup of trash that I felt like I was sitting in some stranger’s lap.
But it wouldn’t be long at all before I was stumbling back into the heap. Johnny and Kylie, the new homeowners, were looking exclusively for tools of any kind to keep around the house. But it was not so; not in any of the houses we stopped in front of. All junk. This gave a certain air of defeat before we even made it to the main event.
The largest draw for Boonesborough Days is the congregation of vendors in Shafer Park, the epicenter of the town. Those lucky enough to own bordering property get to host the superstar garage sales, and every house we had just come from are only lucky enough to pick up the scraps from wounded refugees fleeing the park, trying to find solace in the ice cream shop or Nora Roberts’ famous bookstore.
So really, it was no matter that we couldn’t find anything of use to us beforehand, as we were just now getting to the nerve center of the thing. A stretching battalion of buzzards would not waive the spirit of those with enough grit to go and soar with the eagles! This was to celebrate the founding of a town, after all. Do you think George and William Boone were scared off by a couple measly native settlements spread across their claim? No! And it was with this lingering pride that we funneled into the creatively named Park Drive.
Immediately, my faith was given greater resolve as my eyes wandered to one of the Lucky Houses just a turn away from the park. There, stranded and calling to me from the holy patch of land that peasants might call a “front yard,” but which is actually an extension of the good graces emanating from the central turf, I saw the bodies of two acoustic guitars. I counted sixteen strings all together, which meant I was looking at the mythical pairing of a twelve-string and an acoustic bass. In such an artless town, this was like finding a centaur coddling a wounded jackalope in its strong arms.
I nearly jumped out of the car to ensure my spot in a line of potential freaks that would try to haggle for these celestial beasts. But as my fingers graced the door handle, I relaxed and slid back into the lap of a torn newspaper. I may not have enough cash on me to take even one of them home today, but I knew if I cut the fellow a deal into my possible wealth, he would be helpless to resist:
Yes, sir, that is what I said: a songwriter. Yeah… I’ve got a couple of hits on my hands, for sure. They’ll sell, you can count on that–but no, I doubt if the scope of my genius will be recognized in my life… But that’s exactly why I want YOUR FAMILY to be cut into the royalties to my probable No. 1s. Yes, sir, in exchange for these fine instruments–though, is that a glueline I see there on the headstock?–your bloodline will be wealthier than the Boones ever were! Why won’t my own family see these profits? You see, I’ve been infertile since age eleven, and all my extended family was swept into a whirlpool one terrible summer… Yes, it is tragic… What? Oh, great! You’ll see your first check in fifteen years.
Full-proof. I had the sucker by the jugular and he didn’t even know it yet. I was practically rubbing my hands together as we were directed through the long stretch of grass that led to the impromptu parking lot, but my mind was able to break away from my scheming ecstasy long enough to see that a family was coming our way to get to the park. The sum of the unit was entirely unremarkable, save for the youngest boy, who was perhaps two or three years my junior. I thought I might have gone to school with his brother, but I doubt if I ever knew any of his kin.
The boy had nervous eyes, and trying mostly in vain to follow their path, I was able to understand why immediately. He tried to be non-chalant about it, but he was obviously terrified of a pitbull that lay in the grass. She was huge, but harmless. A beautiful old thing with gray fur and pale blue eyes. Her owner was trying to pull her up into action from the other end of a long leash, but she would not budge.
I don’t think the nervous young man needed to sidestep her quite as dramatically as he did, for if she lunged at him with a newfound lust for blood (fueled by adrenaline not known to her nervous system for some time) he would probably only need to wipe slobber off his leg, and the bully’s owner would have to carry an exhausted dog into the back of his car.
We stopped at some arbitrary place in the grass that looked like it could be a fine parking space, had there been lines drawn down either side of us. Just as I was about to hit the grass and bolt for my tickets to stardom, Johnny spilled an Alani down the side of the driver’s seat. Expletives and misdirected anger ensued, and the tension in my present situation paired with the very tangible feeling of my Someday Fame slipping through my fingers was too great to handle.
I hurriedly did my part by soaking up what little bit spilled under the seat. Then, I composed myself enough to ask if I could go ahead of them and try to locate some guitars. I tried to sound polite and not entirely pathetic, but I definitely failed on at least one of those fronts. My sister beamed my soul with her kindest eyes and allowed me this little bit of insolence.
I snaked my way between food trucks and wandering children and not-yet tired parents. I tried to be quick without drawing attention to myself. Naturally, if any one of these skullsuckers knew they were in the presence of a potential future Songwriter Extraordinaire, I would be stopped by every schmuck with the bright idea to get my autograph before I took off. More value and more social credit in this ruthless lionizing world. Any other day, I might have been more inclined to indulge these potential future peasants, but I was on a mission right now.
Escaping a game of tag a couple of kids were eager to get me in on (most likely sensing the aura of a man destined for fame), I turned down what I knew was the correct street—but no guitars. No! Impossible, they were right here calling out to me! It was the only thing in this town that had held my attention for more than thirty seconds in six years. What kind of cruel mirage was this?
Shaking, I walked to the disaster site, where only a dusty old foldout table remained. Two stacks of books with names nobody would care to ever speak into the physical world laid on it, untouched. I couldn’t believe the trick my mind had played on me to convince itself that Boonesborough Days was worth coming to. Forget that business about the Boone brothers, I thought. My destiny had been ripped out of my hands during a celebration of their legacy.
Just as I was about to pass out, a thin old gentleman walked out of his opened garage and grabbed up an empty metal clothes rack without acknowledging me. Defeated and desperate, I called out to this cruel apparition.
“Did you have, uh, guitars out here?” I said, using my youth and disappointment to score some pity, while trying to sound very interested all the same.
“I don’t… a guy just came on by.”
We managed to exchange some pleasantries while I held back my bile, which thankfully subsided before I reached the park grounds again. As a balloon dog exploded next to me, my despair focused and I realized that all my childhood fears had come true: some sea creature got to this impermanent opportunity before me, and was now roaring off back to whatever hole they crawled out of to pen the No. 1 hit of the summer of 2040. I was on the verge of tears. Completely embarrassed by my own ambition.
Regaining my composure, I wandered without any purpose into the center of the action. As I walked, I took note of the scene that unfolded around me on this side of the creek. There were quaint pop-ups selling homemade jewelry and various woodworked items. There were handmade rugs that my Nan might’ve liked and knitted hats that resembled an old pair of slippers in my closet.
I was actually drawn in by these goods. Not in the way that I was incentivized to purchase anything, but in the sense that I could look past my resentment towards this nothing town and see these vendors for more than the unintelligent redneck shysters I assumed them all to be. A feeling of warmth started to grow in me like a recently lit and very sweet smelling candle as I passed by several families moving through the crowd like giant jellyfish. The kids were lively and the parents looked at-ease. I felt like a real Boonsborian for a second.
But that second was perhaps too long, as my little flame was snuffed out almost immediately as I stopped to take a deep breath and smile jovially. On the inhale, I turned my head to see a giant tent right in the middle of the playground with a maze of tables. Most were cluttered with fidget toys that still had the excess plastic on them from where the 3D printer spewed them out, but there was a centerpiece full of Labubus. On the exhale, smoke came out of my nose. We’re still in Boonsboro, Toto.
I looked at my surroundings again with a renewed disdain. I noticed kids walking in pairs, mirrored by their parents towering behind them. Large balloon swords cut through the air like fins on harmless sharks. I remembered the balloon dog’s misfortune and decided to flee.
I started pacing up and down the center creek with much hate in my heart for whatever cruel pocket of the world allowed for the creation of a Labubu. I was overcome by a manic hate, and I began sweating profusely. Everyone suddenly looked like someone I knew in middle school. The disgust worn by a girl who I accidentally shoulder-checked was especially familiar.
I wondered what any of these people would do if I threw myself into the creek and flailed around like I was fully convinced that this was the end of my life. I would probably drown before anyone else trudged into this murky water for someone that looked like a non-resident. I wondered what a scene like that would do to the mind of a Boonsboro-bred child.
I turned to take a step towards the creek. I threw my head about my shoulders to see if there appeared to be anyone that looked like a good-samaritan. It was not so.
“Hey, Tyler!”
The voice came suddenly, and I didn’t recognize it at first. Well, this was it, I thought: face the old classmate who would probably shove me into the creek anyway, or bend my knees to make a great plunge in the ways of my own destiny. I had a split-second to make my decision, but that microcosm of time was wasted by my natural instinct to jerk my head in the direction of a potential threat. Extreme self-loathing at the fact that my own survival instincts had just blown my chance at going out on my own terms.
But facing this would-be predator was ultimately the right decision, as my sweat glands were given a break, and my environment was made more bearable by a friendly presence.
To escape another four years of the sociologically stunted crowd at Boonsboro, I chose to apply to Barbara Ingram School for the Arts at the end of eighth grade. It certainly was an escape, but at what cost? I have been known to say that it is a school full of people who do art; not a school full of artists. In the extravagantly edited yearbook, there is an area for each senior to state their plans for the future. Most go on to something in the medical field. I remember staring at page after page of dentists and veterinarians my freshmen year and becoming very depressed. Why would you come to an art school if this wasn’t your lifeblood? If you would ultimately hock your violin or your paint brushes to take up a scalpel?
But now in my senior year, it becomes very clear to me why. I can’t blame all the graduated seniors for moving into the world in a practical manner after they got their artistic kicks out of their system. Just as I can’t blame my current classmates for their own disposition. Almost everyone else applied with the motivation of escape as well, and Boonsboro isn’t even the worst school in Washington County.
Barbara Ingram is a melting-pot of beaten-down freaks who had to run from whatever form of intolerance besieged them at their home school, all lashing out at random intervals because of the trauma they’ve had to endure prior to high school. Most of them just never tried to be as enthusiastic about their release as I did. And I won’t knock that. Get dealt a shit hand, bluff real well, and be forced to play that shit hand regardless. Sinatra belts for the more romantic of these folk.
However, there are still those who hold their cards to their chest, and who smile at all the sharks around them with a hint of genuine joy that angers the cruel beasts. This quality is found very plainly in one Elenor Clayton, a fellow string-plucker in the state-renowned BISFA Guitar Ensemble. She is only a sophomore. I hope this quality of radiance and authenticity stays with her throughout her tenure at the peanut gallery. Hope.
This hope filled my chest as my brooding was interrupted by Ellie’s full smile flushing the fear and loathing from my system. Her small hand waved excitedly at me and drew me to the other side of the creek.
As I approached, that selfsame smile faded slightly, if only to make it easier to speak. She asked me how I was, and unable to properly express my relief at seeing her, I began jabbering madly in some vague salute to our shared interest:
“Elanor! Did you see that bastard over there that was selling guitars?”
Her smile did not waiver, but her eyes narrowed as she shook her head. I continued, “Someone practically snatched them from my hands.”
Her smile took a more sympathetic form now as she interjected, “That’s so tragic!”
Finally, someone who wouldn’t downplay my melodrama. I hadn’t known someone to do so since my own sophomore year.
“Yeah, it is,” I started up again, “I don’t know what someone in such an artless place like this would even do with a guitar.” I paused and narrowed my eyes; “I bet there are very few who can even play. Probably just me, you, and Ryan Franko. You wouldn’t take a guitar from me; would you, Ellie?”
I could see that this really rattled her. My enhanced fear response nerves were still shot from the nanoseconds of fight-or-flight I had experienced when I heard her call my name, so my facial recognition abilities were temporarily diminished. I couldn’t tell if it was guilt or fear of an obviously disturbed and sweat-drenched man seriously menacing her from almost two feet above.
She raised her hands timidly and smartly denied the charges. “Of course not! I haven’t seen any guitars here!”
This was not a compelling argument in any logical sense, but my heart was already convinced. I felt like I had just stepped on a dog’s paw and was now attempting to call it over from the corner where it cowered.
“I know you wouldn’t, Ellie. I know your soul is too pure. I know you’re fundamentally good.” I saw the tension that had mounted over the course of our conversation leave her body. It was heralded by the appearance of suddenly relaxed shoulders, and the return of her bright smile.
Wanting to distance myself from the creature that had just attacked without hesitation, I jumped into the only other topic that swam around in my mind. “Did you see they’re selling Labubus? What’s happening to this town!? Are you from here?”
Her smile deepened at the mention of Labubus and my anger towards them, then shrank back to answer me, “Yeah, and so is she.” She gestured towards a girl standing behind her who I hadn’t noticed when I walked up. “This is Also Ellie, by the way.”
I smiled the best pleasant smile I could muster under these circumstances, “Hi… Also Ellie.”
This was too much for me now. Here was some psychic attack intended to further disorient me. It was a clear indicator that the conversation must end, and I would go out and face the Boonsboro gentry again. I nodded awkwardly at the Ellies and ducked away into the crowd. Swept up and numb, I followed wherever this great stream of families and one-off hicks took me.
I floated aimlessly for a moment, cautiously observing the faces that passed me by. But there was nothing to be divined in these faces. They all blended together into an ugly mass of flesh with small eyes, all swirling and melting around each other like an angel exposed to the fires of Hell.
Ah… horrible nightmares in the waking world. I was not in Hell, but there was an awful smell rising in the air. It was not quite sulfur, but the combination of the Boonsboro Must and feces from all kinds of fauna rivaled it in a righteous way. Hellfire was not scorching the skin of the wicked, but screams still rang through the air. I became fully lucid again just in time to catch a group of young adults all looking at each other in disbelief. One of them pointed into the sky and proclaimed, “Something big just flew above us!”
Monsters loose in a town full of them. And it made sense, given the circumstances. Here we were standing in their den, for chrissakes. To the left of me was a petting zoo, and to my right was a small pavilion housing rows upon rows of artificial turf, wound around horizontal wooden poles; all crowded with birds of prey along the full length of each one. I stood absolutely captivated for maybe too long.
Two completely separate crowds had formed and then lost interest in the time I spent gawking. Front and center in the second, a large woman stood with a dumb smile on her face, contorting her chins as she tilted her head to look through the phone screen she was recording the birds on. Her purse hung lazily on her right arm, and to my horror, a small chihuahua poked its head out of the open zipper. It looked at the birds with total irreverence, but several owls had turned their heads to see what little they could of the dog. When I turned my attention away from the poor thing, an owl had turned its own head completely backwards to look into my eyes. It blinked once and without checking behind me, I began backing away slowly.
I only became aware of my surroundings again when I felt the terrain beneath me change significantly. I had taken one final step out of the grass and onto the cracking asphalt of the park’s basketball court. I felt as though I was at a safe enough distance to turn my back on the bird now, and in this comfort I repositioned myself to read graffiti that had been sprayed just underneath the hoop. There were marks in the center of the delinquent art from where successful shots had come through the net and smacked down upon it. Despite this contortion, it still clearly read, “Viva La Loco.”
Indeed. Pivoting, I turned where I stood on the court to see the Pony Ride off to my right. A burly and brightly uniformed man led a small, golden horse around in a couple fenced-in circles. The guided rider could not have been more than three years old, and looked ridiculously fragile on the back of the animal. His legs could not part wide enough to straddle the pygmy equine, so he sat with his legs dangling off the side of its back like the stiffly hogtied prisoner of some forgotten and meaningless outlaw of the Old West.
When his ride was over, his mother took him up into her arms. Glancing my way, she began to look sick, and hurried off. I realized far too late how I must’ve looked, settled there in my crooked posture and wearing the scruff that had been born of my week-long unshaven chin. And although my decision to grow a mustache will forever be a net-positive, I realized that it would not help dispel the rumor that the rest of my appearance had spread about me in that moment.
There was no hope then to call after her and explain that my gaze was merely an attempt to observe everything I saw with intense spiritual scrutiny; trying to connect the mundane to some long-running vein that fueled life itself. Yes, let her go. Let her walk away knowing in her dampened heart that there were many kinds of monsters loose in the park that day.
I let her gain a substantial distance from the petting zoo before I made my way over to it. Most of the festival’s youth had gathered here to poke and prod at the caged animals. Two silkie chickens stayed revolving around each other in the center of their enclosure. Despite this, the ambitious among us were still able to reach that far. A highland cow with a matted tuft of hair on top of its head slumped against its fencing and moved it significantly in the direction it fell. As I rounded the llama’s cage, a semi-circle formed out of the negative space created when some middle schoolers lunged back. In their recoil, one of them nearly landed against my chest.
“Look out,” the eldest looking of them cried, “he’s gonna spit!”
A reasonable fear given the fact that the llama was clearly chewing on some cud, but it merely shook its head frantically and turned it away from us.
As much as I admire their stature and attitude, goats and I have never gotten along. Horrible memories of a particularly demonic entity flooded into my mind. It was standing on its hind legs to greet me in the dead of night as I arrived at a friend’s house. I was seriously unnerved. Which, looking back, should’ve rung clear to me as an omen of what was to come. And the night that followed was indeed too horrible to be described here. But looking down unto the small goat before me filled me with no such trepidation. I ended up feeling the sorriest for this fellow. Here he was all alone, unlike the chickens, who at least had strength in numbers. Every other living thing around him, although solitary, dwarfed him in size.
Looking up at me, he moved nervously forward. As he neared the gate, I reached in to scratch his head, but we both recoiled from each other at the same time. I took a step away from the enclosure and let him come towards me as before. When he reached the end of his real-estate, he craned his neck down, wedged his snout between the metal bars, and began chewing on a dandelion that had sprouted just out of his reach.
I stood hopelessly for a moment before I looked around for some flowers. I planned on shoving any I could pluck through the bars of his perimeter, as a token of my esteem. A quick scan of the ground yielded nothing, and my search was cut short when my phone began to buzz in my pocket. Another call from Kylie. She told me to go to the food trucks so that the three of us could reconvene. As I hung up, the goat unwedged his mouth, shook his head once, and turned away from me.
On my way, I finally spotted a vendor that interested me. Sunlight shone through a completely white canvas and spilled out onto the walkway in front of it. I found it very important in that moment to diverge from my current path to see what this bright tent held. There were paintings hung along the walls, advertisements for watercolor lessons, and a large seed stand full of postcards. The only other presence there were two older ladies standing against the thin back wall, whom I presume to be the artist and a friend who came to help out.
I felt singled out and hurried in my solitude, so I took to the postcards quickly. I didn’t peruse for very long, but I decided right away that purchases would need to be made. I am not an artist, and I am thankfully not an art critic either, so I cannot tell you why the variation of brushstrokes resonates with me so perfectly. I cannot tell you the theoretical reasons that the exact blend of colors vibrates so in tune with my soul. But I can tell you that it does.
I picked out the first two I saw–a side-profile of a horse with a big, sad eye, and two cats teaching a kitten to drink from a water bowl–and decided that if I let any more into my sight they would similarly penetrate my soul and have to be purchased as well. While I waited for the artist to break change, I noticed among the paintings a depiction of a motorcycle outlaw, with two small American flags waving in the wind. I thanked her as she gave me my return and slipped an advertisement for her watercolor seminars into my bag, but I privately cursed her for affecting me in such a way. I don’t think I’ll ever send the postcards to anyone.
Shortly after meeting back up with Kylie and Johnny, we planned to flee. Not even the Holy Houses graced by the proximity of Shafer Park were peddling anything worthwhile, at least not for our purposes. It would’ve been a field day for board game enthusiasts, though.
With all of us needing a break from the crowds, we marched out to Main Street. As we walked the length of it, we never encountered any other passerby. Our plan was to circle back into the Shafer at the end of Main, which would spit us out closer to where we had parked. Kylie and Johnny were ahead of me far enough so that I could not hear their conversation over the noise of passing cars. I lagged behind in a semi-dazed state. I expected some relief after escaping the park, but I had failed to realize that I was still in Boonsboro.
There goes the street where I had experienced not one, but two middle school parties, wherein I played the role of a scared dog. There goes the barbershop I would run into my classmates far too regularly at. I hug my barber when I leave now. There goes Nora Roberts’ bookstore and the Inn she revitalized. Can’t you see her waving from the window? There goes the ice cream store where I felt shame and anger at the world for the first time. And here again is the park. Too many memories to list.
We were the only ones leaving at that point, so we managed to escape pretty easily. We finally turned off of Park Lane, and headed that short distance home. We passed one more yard sale on our way out, but overall Johnny chose a pretty good route.
It would have been easy enough for me to forget the day's events when I walked through my front door had I been a true outsider. Perhaps if I never left Middletown I would be able to look at a Boonsborian heritage celebration with unbiased eyes. To see it for the boring gaggle of crafty old folk and food trucks that it is.
But as I look down from my vantage point on the mountain, there is a dark fog that hangs over the town. It makes it impossible to discern any clear details. Only vague flashes of light when the carnival sets up and a distant, worn-out PA system when the Warriors take to the field. The fog only ever lifts when I start that trek down the mountain once again, where I find myself moving quickly down Main Street, hoping that I have a forgettable face; wondering how I ever got tricked into coming back.