Vigilance in Overalls

Yesterday, as I was driving to class, a figure caught my eye—a solitary, masked man standing firm on a street corner. He wore overalls and that now-familiar face mask we’ve all grown used to in the pandemic era. In his hands was a neon sign with a message I couldn’t make out from my car window, a personal pet peeve. I wanted to stop, to tell him his text was illegible and that if he wanted his message to be heard, clarity was key. But time wasn’t on my side that day, so I told myself: if I saw him again, I’d pull over and talk to him, just for shiggles.

Sure enough, the very next day on my way home, there he was. Same corner, same sign, same man, or so it seemed. I didn’t hesitate this time. I zipped down the next street, parked in the nearest spot, and walked purposefully toward him. Calling out, “Hi there!”, he turned, mask and all, and greeted me back with a nod of recognition.

I told him straight up: “Your sign? Impossible to read from a moving car.” He shrugged, saying the heart of his message wasn’t the whole sign, it was the headline, the big print at the top. Stepping closer, I made it out: “IMPEACH 47.”

Boom. That hit harder than I expected. Eureka, Illinois; a town proudly draped in red like a banner of conservatism, doesn’t usually host protesters calling for impeachment in open daylight. It made me stop and think. I shook his hand, thanked him for standing up, and asked what drove him.

He gave me a name like “Dan” or “Bob”, common enough to blend in, and explained his mask wasn’t just pandemic protocol,  it was a shield for anonymity. “In times like these,” he said, “speaking your truth comes with a cost.”

We talked about what’s unfolding in the nation; troops deployed on home turf, masked immigration agents pulling people off streets, a political climate so rife with chaos, you wonder where values went. Liberal, conservative, doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. The real issue? The erosion of principles that built this country.

He showed me the quote on his sign’s bottom lines, a gem worth sharing: “The price for liberty is eternal vigilance.” Most attribute it to Thomas Jefferson, but it actually traces back to an Irish politician, John Philpot Curran, who famously said, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

That hit close to home. Especially here in Eureka, where Eureka College was founded on radical ideas for its time: equality regardless of race or gender, a stance against complacency and injustice. This town’s history whispers those reminders if you listen.

Dan wasn’t just holding a sign; he was channeling that legacy, standing for the kind of accountability and awareness this quiet burgh rarely sees. He was carrying the weight of the past, his father’s beliefs, and perhaps ours too.

This encounter left me thinking: If we claim to care about our country, can we afford to sit back? Complacency is the price we pay when vigilance fades. So yeah, maybe it’s time to stop scrolling, start seeing, and actually act. Because liberty demands it. Eternal vigilance demands it.

this shit is written by me and spicy autocomplete, u know the deal 😜