There are towns in this country that the modern world has forgotten, and then there are towns that have forgotten the modern world right back. Oatman, Arizona is of the latter variety — a sun-scorched hamlet of one hundred souls, governed by a donkey named Walter and host each Independence Day to what may be the most perfectly American competition ever devised: frying an egg on the sidewalk.

Lauren Teebor’s To Live Another Day, To Fry Another Egg takes us into this glorious absurdity with the warmth and patience it deserves. Every Fourth of July, Oatman’s population arrive in star-spangled regalia to kneel before the pavement and coax breakfast out of the sun with nothing but ingenuity and the kind of heat that would give the devil himself pause. They build contraptions. They strategize. They sweat through their costumes. And when the frying is done, win or lose, they celebrate together, because the egg was never really the point.

What Teebor understands, and what her film captures beautifully, is that tradition does not require grandeur to be sacred. It requires only that people keep showing up. The Burro B**ch shows up. The gunslinger shows up. The caretaker of Mayor Walter shows up. And year after year, in a town the highway barely remembers, they perform the same rituals under the same punishing sky, not because anyone is watching, but because it is theirs.

This is a film about a small place doing a small thing with enormous heart, and if that doesn’t strike you as worth fifteen minutes of your time, I’d wager you’ve been spending your time poorly.