Remembering the Fourth

A Facebook friend sent me a nostalgic little trip into his childhood in Manhattan, Montana, when the whole community came out to an annual Independence Day celebration he's never quite forgotten, nor would he want to. Reminded me of my own, which I described myself just two years ago here.

We're still in the agonizing throes of a flood that swept us out of house and home. Things are going just about as well as we could wish them back there, dehumidifiers and big fans drying things out on the first floor; but for the time being we're like hundreds--maybe thousands--of Siouxlanders who are spending their nights, well, away, Barbara and I at an apartment at Dordt.

It's abundantly wearying and disconcerting, but it's good for me to stay at it here, on my grandson's little Mac Pro instead of my desktop--I think I can stay healthy at a keyboard. We're working hard at putting our lives together again--and making progress too.

Many, many of our neighbors have far, far more to rebuild. 

So this Fourth, an Oostburgian oldie.

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It was, I’d like to believe, a big choir, lots of folks on stage. I was a boy–kindergarten, first grade or second–and it seems to me that the woman who ran the whole pageant that Fourth of July night was my own beloved kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Nyenhuis, another mom really, a teacher who fashioned a child’s first scary year of school into pure joy.

We don’t do pageants anymore, probably for good reason: there’s too much cynicism in all of us--and, just maybe, too much money. But I was, back then, on the other side of ten years old, and the whole event, right there in the Oostburg Village Park, was big time. Was huge. Somewhere during the pageant, I walked across the stage–I have no idea when, perhaps as the pioneers were introduced or something. I’m almost sure I had some kind of costume Mom put together, but all of that is long gone.

What isn’t, sixty-plus years later, is the grand finale, when everyone who had any kind of role crowded back on the makeshift stage to sing “This is My Country.” I’m sure Mrs. Nyenhuis asked the crowd to join in. It was a massive village celebration, sometime mid-fifties, when, in that crowd, almost any dad–like mine–had some kind of service uniform he still might have worn, folded neatly in some upstairs closet.

What diff’rence if I hail from North or South
Or from the East or West?
My heart is filled with love for all of these.
I only know I swell with pride and deep within my breast
I thrill to see Old Glory paint the breeze.

I don’t remember holding sheet music, don’t remember reading lyrics, and we were several decades away from some massive screen. I only remember standing up there among many others, most of them older, and I remember singing. We’d just told the blessed nation’s story in a procession of tableau tales I was just old enough to understand; and now, the last song before the fireworks, the finale, had everyone in town standing, hearts overflowing with love and swelled with pride “to see Old Glory paint the breeze.”

I was struck almost mute by an emotion I could not have identified but understood to have grown up within me when that Old Glory flew high somewhere just off stage. Whatever it was, this attack seemed almost crippling, and a bit scary because somehow it rose out of my own control. I couldn’t have shusshed it, couldn’t have stanched the wave of whatever it was that clouded my eyes, made my lips go all bouncy. I remember singing, but not as loud as I might have because something alive was coursed through me. It was my first trembling moment of love of country, even though I knew next to nothing about American history.

With hand upon heart I thank the Lord
For this my native land,
For all I love is here within her gates.
My soul is rooted deeply in the soil on which I stand,
For these are mine own United States.

The old hymn’s passionate possessive adjectives sound pushy today–so heavy on my and silent on yours too; but I was a kid, and I wasn’t thinking of keeping others out or running others off. At that precious moment in my perception, “This is my country” was a spiritual testimony. I lived in a rich and beautiful land, a land that actually, truly, belonged to me too, just as it belonged to every other kid on that stage beneath the stars.

The song itself had very little history in the mid-50s. It was composed in 1940, and made popular by Fred Waring and his singers (one of whom was a Kranendonk, from Oostburg, my mother told me proudly). Somehow I knew every word, probably because she pounded it out time and time again on our piano while my dad sang along.

That night, Fourth of July, mysteriously filled me with an emotion I’d never felt before and didn’t understand, and claimed its own homestead in my heart’s memories. Whatever coursed through me I knew had to do with the land, with George Washington, Betsy Ross, and “Fourscore and seven years ago.” And it had to do with fighting wars–it had to do with what little I understood of battles won and lost, and something called sacrifice, and then also the sheer beauty of mountains and fruited plains in a land that somehow, even to a boy, seemed brimming with possibility.

I am so far beyond that now, the moment that night. “This is My Country,” comes as a flashback I’ll always remember because I cannot forget. Still makes me smile. Proudly.

“Innocence,” some sage said, “is so much more powerful than experience.” Sometimes it is.

Something got lost. I’ll never be seven again. I can’t go back to an Oostburg childhood, the wonderful "doings" in the park, and a Fourth of July that is no more. What’s more, the language of that patriotic hymn, now rarely sung, feels embarrassingly self-centered. 

But I can never and will never give up the memory of that Fourth. That night still stirs up a smile in my soul.

This is my country! Land of my choice!
This is my country! Hear my proud voice!
I pledge thee my allegiance, America, the bold,
For this is my country! To have and to hold.

I remember.

What Smokey thinks

Just now. Smokey the cat.

Sometimes he sits at the door, crying. He's never done that before. It's as if something registers in him that this is not his home, despite the food dish and the box for his goodies. He's got a new upstairs to roam and wonderfully expansive windows from which to see the world outside, including our neighbors, a whole bunch of flood victims, including kids. Still, he wants out.

Just now, he jumped up on the desk and proceeded to let me know that he is vastly more important than any of those odd forms marching across the screen. Even though he's got us--russian blues like him are supposed to be, genetic-wise, wildly loving to those they know well--and he is; even though he's never, ever been an outside cat, nor shown inclinations as if to say he wanted to be; even though were he to take off here, fifteen miles from home, he wouldn't have a clue where he was, never having been here before, even though all of that is true, he wants out.

And there are those stories of cats wandering home when their owners were sure they were long gone--cats who do it all to get home. Perhaps if we'd let him out, he'd show up at the place we all call home, bedraggled maybe, but happy. Maybe he's got this mythical cat compass, you know. 

But the cruel truth is, in fact, that place out on the edge of Alton is no longer home. The basic structure is recognizable, but what's inside, at least on the first floor, would be more than slightly strange. I can't help thinking that were he to show up, the long pilgrimage would have ended in disappointment. The old place isn't what it was before the flood (sounds almost biblical).

The sad news is that he'll just have to make do with this marvelous gift of shelter in the time of storm, the quarters we've been blessed to occupy. He're, he's got food; he's got his box, and he's got us, boring as we may be.

I'm not altogether sure if cats have imaginations, but I've learned not to sell them short; and if they do, I'd like to think that, like him, he'd love to wander back to his favorite places to sleep--upstairs in a shaft of afternoon sun, downstairs on the couch, right below the pillow on the fainting couch.

Yesterday, in a garage full of flood-ravaged half-sunken treasures, I spotted a blue chair beneath a burden of wet scrapbooks and file folders. I wondered if that chair had made it out, then tried to scrub a water line away with my hands when I realized that scum line wasn't left there by flood. It was cat fur.

Honestly, it made my morning.

And, if you're wondering, he's given up ownership of my keyboard and is, right now, I believe, in search of new sleeping quarters.

So, not to worry, all right? He'll be okay. So will we. It won't be the same for any of us, but we'll be okay.                               

Flood--1

I sent this picture to my granddaughter, told her to guess which one was her grandma. Truth is, I wasn't sure myself. Now that I look at it on the screen, she's no longer hidden; but when I peeled it from a wet page of a sodden drawer full of old pictures, I had some trouble myself. I thought my granddaughter would get a kick out of her grandma of the 65 Western Christian cheer line.

Once my little game is over, it will be my spouse's choice as to whether this sopping wet newspaper clipping gets some drying time and holds on to its place in the scrapbook of her memories, where it would be today if it had not been so rudely displaced by the Floyd River's decision to break out its banks and go on a spree of destruction none of its neighbors could have predicted or imagined. Us either.

If you want to know the story of the deluge, listen up. Starts with me--no, starts with 12 to 15 inches of rainfall on what was already soggy ground. Truth be known, no country bridge is going to sit still with that much water making a beeline to Omaha.

When all that rain joined forces, the lazy Floyd, hardly a crick for the last year, swelled up mean and hungry in a way that I'd rather not rethink. 

It was five when I was awakened by the toilet gurgling obscenely, bubbling up in a way that made me think that rain last night wasn't a pittance. I turned on the porch light and saw something we'd never seen before--the Floyd River licking up the front of our deck. The record-breaker, years ago, stayed sixty feet out. 

I ran to get Barbara to show her--by then it was another four or five inches up and lapping at the sliding door. We bought a sump pump last flood, but had never used it. I called my neighbor to help me check it, which we did. I shoved the end of the hose out a window when I looked down at the water. Our neighbor left on the spot; he had his own concerns. We called our kids, who trooped over.

By the time our own forces were at its strength--one grandma, one mama, a grandson, a pregnant granddaughter and her husband--things were being dished up out of the wading pool the bottom floor of our house had become, all that hard work being done without me, a cripple, waiting for surgery. It was a mountain of work done arduously in rising waters--grab what you can, get it up the stairs to safety before.. .what?--before what finally happened: before the rushing Floyd turned into a bully, popped out the glass patio door and bullied its way into the house, filling up the bottom floor until five feet of water took out book cases (and books) and made retrieval of anything about impossible. There were scary moments because all of that river didn't justt saunter in but rammed in with force enough to make the kids and my daughter worry and try to keep balance against the tide. Our new grandson-in-law actually went under for a flash in the rushing water. No, I'm not making this up.

Eight days later we're still looking for some things that were swept away. After three solid days of hard, dirty work and with the help of a wonderful gang of volunteers, that first floor is bare naked, down to the studs. The hum of fans and dehumidifiers are the sounds of silence in the house. My kids and the cloud of witnesses who weren't just witnesses are now gone, leaving the work of paging throgh sopping-wet albums in search of not to be tossed photos to us because it's a job only we can do.

Pictures like that one up there, a Barbara Van Gelder no one in the family ever knew, a foreigner really, the girl she left behind. So why save the picture, right?

Years ago, when I was a boy, an old yellow megaphone was in an upstairs closet in my bedroom. I'm sure there was more there, but all I remember right is that yellow megaphone with the brown letters--O H S in mega-letters down the sides. My mom was a cheerleader--Oostburg High School, class of 1936. I used to take it out, put that silver mouth piece to my lips and just pretend. I was way too masculine to let out a yell.

Oddly enough, my first real girlfriend was a cheerleader for our most hated rivals, the Cedar Gove Rockets. My senior year, the coach put in a "tackle eligible" play, just for me--turned a 10- or 12- yard gain too, right in front of her. I was the eligible tackle.

And I married a cheerleader too--that young woman on the right end of the lineup. She's been my wife for 52 years last Thursday, as a matter of fact, just four days after. the two. of us were made homeless. 

So I say, keep the shot. You just never know really, what magic those old artifacts might create. Of course, now I've got it on my phone, close to my heart--I'm trying to be romantic. 

That old megaphone is long gone, has been for decades. Mom herself probably tossed it when they left the house I grew up in. I'm guessing she held it up to her lips too. Yell out a cheer?  Maybe so, if I know my mom. 

All of that from a 59-year old picture sopping wet.