Chapters 10-11: In Which We experience the "Glorious Fourth" and Will Just Has to Escape From Mournin' for the Afternoon

Hallo! I'm going to start pairing chapters now, to save time. Onto Chapters Ten and Eleven!

In these chapters, Will tells the reader about the Fourth of July in Cold Sassy. People, black and white, line the streets, all waving flags. Not American, but Confederate. They have a huge parade, consisting of anti-Union, pro-Confederate displays, and the town's only two suffragettes, Miss Love, and Will's eccentric Aunt Carrie. In the end, there is an exhibition where the surviving veterans of the Civil War act out the Battle of Gettysburg. Sadly, Will's family is in mourning for Granny and cannot participate as planned.

Although this chapter doesn't seem too important, it really gives a better understanding of the community of Cold Sassy.

The next day, when Grandpa goes to Jefferson to marry Miss Love, Will decides to sneak off and go fishing at Blind Tillie Trestle with T.R. (his dog named after Theodore Roosevelt!). Will just wants to get away from his upset mama and papa and enjoy being a boy (instead of mourning). Will introduces the reader to Mill Town with its small, hot, cramped houses with the linty, disgruntled, exhausted mill workers on the porches. He worries about meeting his nemesis, Hosie Roach while walking through Mill Town where he refers to himself as "the town boy" passing by. He makes it, and once at the creek, he decides to walk across the train trestle, and tells us that it "occurred to" T.R. "to be scared."