I can admit it now, but it's likely I would have back then too because I was proud of being haughty about it, proud of my sinful condescension and scorn, my being downright snooty, a snob. I was demonstrably proud of my Dutch heritage, had written about it extensively. In fact, lots of characters in my fiction carried Dutch names. It wasn't as if I was a heretic. But Tulip Festivals?--spare me.
If you live in some adjacent village here, come May you can't help but smirk at an entire town in short pants, silly hats, and downright painful klompen, for pete's sake. Street-scrubbing? Give me a break. And whose ancestors, really, danced in the streets? Dancing got you thumbed out of church. Get a life, Orange City. Just think--mid-May comes along and you could be putting your dock in up at the lakes. Instead, you're slobbering over cotton candy, spending half your fortune on goofy rides for the kids, and watching waves of marching bands toot down Main, a half-note flat.
All of it seemed more than a little silly, when the real deal about being Dutch Reformed is the "Reformed" part, the part no OC people talk much about, maybe because, these days especially, it's just about gone.
Don't know that I'd trace my journey as something from the Damascus road--after all, I've not been struck blind or dumb; but since moving to Orange City's suburbs, I've come to appreciate what happens here mid-May. It's a vast and trying community exercise that requires incredible teamwork, buckets of sweat, and even some considerable history study. OC people take it very, very seriously because it's a sprawling enterprise that won't happen without great bands of people working together to pull it off. Silliness? Sure. Funnel cakes? all right, you got me there. But there's also saucijzenbroodjes and poffertjes, itty-bitty pancakes to die for.
My feet and I spent three long hours in the newly refurbished Dutch-American Heritage Museum yesterday, answering all sorts of questions about our collection of Native American artifacts, while, up front, hundreds of people came in and wandered through displays and exhibits featuring all kinds of ethnic stuff that together tell at least something of the story of Dutch-Americans in this far corner of Iowa, of whom I am one. I had to park three blocks away, a considerable distance in small-town U. S. of A., so all I saw of the parade was it dis-assembling. Never got near the rides or the truly sinful cuisine. But the tulips are everywhere, and they're gorgeous this year, perfectly timed, very Dutch; and it goes without saying the town is clean.
I've never donned a Dutch costume, not even a shirt or neckerchief. Not even a hat. It's time to admit that this last vestige of ye olde stubbornness is a vestige of the old man of sin, the Sioux Centerite who sat for years in the seat of the scoffer.
I'm too old and my feet are too sore for wooden shoes. But at least a neckerchief, maybe a hat? It may be time for the new man of righteousness to edge his way out of the closet.
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