was a view of America

By JAINE TREADWELL

Features Editor

BRUNDIDGE – Sometimes one has to step back from a situation to really see it.

Judson Vaughn saw the Peanut Butter Festival in Brundidge Saturday in a different way, perhaps, from home folks.

Vaughn has lived in large cities, including Los Angeles and, now Atlanta, and was in Brundidge Saturday, by chance.

It was an experience he’ll not soon forget.

"For the first time in 30 years, I felt like I was really seeing America," he said. "The festival was attended by a variety of people –

different races, the affluent, the working class and the very poor. In large cities, it’s the city planners and real estate tycoons who create the view of America and it’s not real. Today, this was real."

Vaughn said he stood back and got a glimpse of what people do when they get together.

"This festival was so simple that it almost appeared to be unorganized, but it was organized. It had to be for it to have gone off so well – but it didn’t seem that way," he said. "It was like a group of people got together and said, ‘You bring the pies and I’ll bring the barbecue

and we’ll all have a great time together.’ There was nothing presumptuous about this festival. It was the real thing."

The Nutter Butter Parade

was "fascinating" to the visitor from Hot-lanta.

"It was spectacular," he said. "What made it so great was that it was a slice of America – the real America. There were men riding down the street in the Peanut Butter Festival parade in pickup trucks and they were riding down the street in the same pickup truck yesterday and will be riding down the street in the same pickup truck tomorrow. It was just life and they live it."

Vaughn said all of the people who came to Brundidge for the Peanut Butter Festival seemed to have a great time.

"These were people who obviously

enjoyed a day of fun and fellowship," he said. "They came together and made and occasion when there was no occasion. That’s America – the real America – and I was a part of it today and I’ll leave with a good feeling that I haven’t had in a long time."