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LEXINGTON, Virginia – America broke out Tuesday afternoon in this small town of Shenandoah Valley.
Four days after the owner of the Red Hen Restaurant sparked a national debate by asking Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, to leave his establishment, all the fire and anger of social media has become flesh at the corners. Washington and Randolph Streets.
[The owner of the Red Hen explains why she asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave]
The quaint red restaurant, its dirty green awnings made famous by a disapproving tweet Monday of President Trump, was to open for dinner service at 5 pm. The protesters began to appear around 3.
At first, there were only two guys holding Trump banners, a Confederate flag and a sign from Corey Stewart for the US Senate. Standing in a continuous rain, mobbed by three or four TV crews who had been stationed in front of the blackened restaurant since morning, the pair said they were there to call for civility.
[Corey Stewart, champion of Confederate statues, wins GOP nod for Senate in Virginia]
"Just to let these people know that we do not appreciate their communism and that they are chasing our official," said Chris Wayne, 35, of Monterey, a mountain hamlet about an hour north. from Lexington.
Wayne gave his profession as "vigilante" – he pointed to the "VGL-NTE" registration plates of his Ford Super Duty red pickup – and said "the policy should not decide if you can eat or not."
That's a shame for Lexington, said his companion, Grayson Jennings, 66, a retired entrepreneur and member of the Confederate Virginia Flaggers Group. "He has lost his way, there are too many heroes and grafts and carpetbaggers," he said.
Lexington is home to two universities – Washington & Lee and the Military Institute of Virginia – and has long been more liberal than Rockbridge County. Lexington went for Hillary Clinton in 2016; Rockbridge went for Trump.
But not since the city eliminated the Confederate flags of municipal poles in 2011 did she see anything overturning public passion like the incident of the Red Hen. "One thing, this city is always polite and kind," said Doug Harwood, 65, publisher of the Rockbridge Advocate, a monthly magazine whose slogan is "Independent as a Hog on Ice."
The police cordoned off the block in front of the red hen on Tuesday. A man was arrested after throwing chicken garbage in front of the closed restaurant. (Norm Shafer / For the Washington Post)
However, on Tuesday afternoon, the flagpole issue began to appear tame. Other protesters joined the Confederates, who had settled on the sidewalk in front of the still dark Red Hen restaurant. "Do not eat at the chore of the committee," reads the poster of a woman in the hand.
A couple of motorists passing by honked or shouted "Trump!" A Volvo driver shouted "Booo!" One guy offered a sincere, "Who cares?"
The hustle and bustle was unusual for Lexington in the summer, when college was out. But it grew even stronger as the crowd grew thicker.
A man in a green hat and black shirt approached the Confederates and yelled at them in the face: "Trump is an idiot!" When asked by a journalist to identify himself, the man refused and offered a business card for the Loyal White Knights. Ku Klux Klan.
Two women and a man presented themselves with a megaphone, holding placards with messages hostile to homosexuals. The owner of the red chicken, Stephanie Wilkinson, in her only interview over the weekend, told the Washington Post that many of her employees were gay and were uncomfortable serving Sanders because she defended Trump's desire to ban transgender people from the army. The group with the bullhorn is seized of that.
"This city is full of people who do not know Jesus Christ and rebel against Jesus Christ by their sins," shouted 50-year-old Dianna Orea. To say that she was from Michigan but traveled around the country preaching, she let God burn them. "His companion, Edgar Orea, started swinging against" Sodomites ".
Wayne and Jennings, the Confederate flagmen, quickly crossed the street to get away from anti-gay slogans. "We do not want to have anything to do with these crazy bigot religious stuff," said Wayne.
Nearby, in front of the house where Stonewall Jackson lived, postal worker Jamie Nuckols began shouting at Edgar Orea. "I support homosexuals! I support homosexuals!" She said.
"Homosexuals destroy America!", Retorted Edgar Orea on the megaphone.
Soon, the police came to tell Orea that he could scream, but he was going to have to put the megaphone. A man with a ponytail came with a bucket of chicken manure and threw it on the corner in front of the red hen and was quickly stopped. More patrol cars arrived and blocked the street in the city of 7,000 inhabitants.
At the present time, several guests had arrived, hoping to eat in the restaurant, which was still dark. Several local traders said that they had not spoken with Wilkinson since the weekend. In the middle of the afternoon, Wilkinson sent a notice that she was resigning from her position as executive director of the downtown business association. The word is rumored that the restaurant might not reopen for another month.
55-year-old Kim Pettus of Richmond was standing in front of the door with a stunned smile at the protest that was unfolding around him. He and his wife drove nearly two hours to dine in a theater for Wilkinson and the restaurant, he said. As an African-American, Pettus said he was proud of his challenge. He was not happy at 5 o'clock in the morning.
"So, all these Confederates closed them until July 5?", He said.
Dianna Orea turned to him. "America is going to hell," she said, "and we need people to repent and follow Jesus Christ."
On the other side of Pettus, Carolyn Eliott, 77, looked a bit puzzled. A resident of Lexington forever, she was offended by the fact that the red hen would turn anyone away. "There is no reason why they could not have been served," said the retired schoolteacher. "I'm so sorry we had such bad publicity, we were a very quiet little country town until that happened."
Beside her, Pettus and Dianna Orea were still delivering there. "All of you are frauds," said Pettus. "You are a liar," she retorted.
The rain stopped, half a dozen police cars were sitting at each end of the block and some 75 people were standing in a large circle, facing each other between the restaurant and Stonewall Jackson's house. Nobody seemed to know what to do next.
On the side, 61-year-old Jim Belcher was observing a US Air Force veteran cap. He shook his head.
"It's a bit like this country right now, when you think about it," he said. "I look at all this and I think, where are the manners?" Where is the respect? -It is sad. "
A few blocks away, Tracy Parker was collecting coins in her auto store. The front of his Ballard & Parker service center was adorned with Trump banners, but Parker laughed when asked about the red hen's incident. He's not worried about the policy of the restaurant owner, he said. It made no sense for him to refuse a paying client.
"I have people coming here all the time with Obama stickers on their cars and I would not want to turn them down," he said. "The lady next door" – he makes a sign to the Rockbridge Music Shop – "She's talking about Hillary Clinton … But I've been working on her car for years. I say it's just a difference of opinion. "
Diana Schofield, the owner of the music store, laughed when she was told about Parker's comment. "I give her all the time about these signs," she said. "But they're great guys out there, they work hard all the time."
People must learn to talk politics without being uncivil, she said. She plays in groups with conservatives, she said; she had dinner just the other night with a hardcore Republican friend.
Still, she was not ready to condemn Wilkinson and what she did to the red hen last Friday night. "It's not really live and let live," she said. "I think our current administration has really crossed the boundaries of many of our rights as citizens."
And all the attention that has focused on Lexington? Maybe not everything is bad.
"People are sure of us now," she says. "A small town in America."
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