The 4th of July is a special time in our town. Grampa Jim's letter to Brett in Afghanistan brings back memories from generations ago to describe our lives lived in peace because of the selfless dedication of those who serve in the services. God Bless our soldiers.
The 4th of July is a special time in our town. Grampa Jim's letter to Brett in Afghanistan brings back memories from generations ago to describe our lives lived in peace because of the selfless dedication of those who serve in the services. God Bless our soldiers.
The 4th of July Letter to Brett,
Hey Brett!!
How are things going for you in Afghanistan? When are they sending you to Germany?
I talked to your mom. I asked her what she had planned for the 4th. She said everything is going as usual: a backyard barbeque with the neighbors. I didn’t ask about Johnathan and Isaac but I’ll bet they and their friends are up to firecrackers and something special.
Does the modern Army make anything special of the 4th holiday?
Do you have computers to get to e-mail and Facebook?
Recently I re-read an old book. We used to think it was a classic. Eventually, they made a movie out of it. I know you’d like it because you always were ready to read a story about armies, war and such as the Romans did in ancient times. The book’s title is Ben-Hur. It was written by Lew Wallace.
What do you do in your time off duty?
The 4th of July is upon us, school is out and graduation ceremonies are over in Bloomfield our one big school in the county. Odessa and Amber graduated this year. I was away visiting Juan in North Carolina and we drove back for the ceremony. At least I tried. Juan made it but I was side-tracked to St Louis for family matters and a funeral.
At any rate, it's definite; summer is here. The corn is growing fast. The soybeans are planted and peeking through and, of course, the farmers are griping about the rain; “To much”, they are saying. Well, we will see.
The sweet corn is coming along fine, at least in my garden. We usually have sweet corn to ear for the 4th but that corn is shipped in from Missouri or points south. Sweet corn in our area will be ready to eat late in July and early August.
There will be a lot of celebrations as usual. The parade in Bloomfield is probably the biggest get-together of the whole year; bigger than the County Fair in August. A lot bigger than the Corn Show event in our town next fall. The 4th event in Bloomfield draws about all the people in the county. Out of the nine thousand or so, I’ll bet at least six thousand show up for something. Brett, you’ve been there, and I know you remember what it’s like when everybody gathers on the square.
Does the Army in Afghanistan celebrate the 4th? Do you see anything like the people ambling through the main street participating in the festivities, greetings, visiting, and eating? As you well know it goes on from sun up till well after sundown. It’s a time when loads of people who have been gone return to see who is getting old, to catch up on what’s going on, and to hug the kids.
This year everything will look pretty much the same as when you were here – marching band from schools in the area, politicians waving from convertibles, Police and Fire Chief in the newest shiny fire truck with sirens wailing, horses and riders with glittery outfits, and kids riding ponies. And, yes tractors -- new ones shining in the sun, as well as ancient ones rebuilt just to show off in the annual 4th parade. After dark, the fireworks will be shot off at the fairgrounds but almost everyone stays at the square to watch. They have special music too.
It all reminds me of what I saw decades ago when I was a kid. The events are the same every year: Of course, the people and events are different but the town is the same. It’s very old. It doesn’t seem to change. Gramma Laurel said the town was old when she was a kid. The big difference, she told me, was that the streets were dirt not pavement then, and the sidewalks were boardwalks. There hasn’t been a new building for a hundred years. I counted two empty spaces where buildings were demolished on the east side of the street across from the courthouse.
Everything revolves around the famous old courthouse. It’s famous because it was featured on the cover of National Geographic one year. It was almost 50 years old when Gramma was a kid in the 1920s that is 100 years ago. By the time she was growing up, automobiles were the rage but most folks in our county still came to town in a horse-drawn wagon. The automobiles scared the horses she said. One of the buildings was used to play silent movies. She played the piano for them and got paid 25 cents for each performance.
I came on the scene at the end of the great depression and a few years before World War 2. As I remember, the 4th celebration in Bloomfield was the biggest thing of the year for me. It was a different time from now but also a time of change and new technology then. For instance, I remember in those days the electric bulb grandpa had in the parlor. He showed it to all the visitors but we didn’t use it much. We still used the coal-oil lamps when it got dark and had to go bed up in the attic where our bunks were. Telephones were new technology too.
My brother and sisters all lived with grandpa or uncle Mac every summer and neither one had running water or an indoor bathroom, just an outhouse. You pumped water from the well in the yard or the well that was in a corner of the kitchen. Grama had a huge iron cookstove that heated the kitchen and part of the house in the cold months. There was a coal stove in the parlor too. Grama had an icebox.
Brett, have you seen one of those? It looks like an oversize filing cabinet with two doors. The top door is where you put the ice. Yes, ice. Food went in the bottom area. My Grampa Fred would go out to the pond when it froze over in the winter and cut blocks of ice out then haul it back to the barn. We had a pyramid of Ice in the barn all summer long. It was covered with sawdust. We would just pick chunks of ice off for Grama’s icebox. It would keep food cool.
Grampa Fred’s place was a mile south of our town right next to Lavern Kline’s house. Us kids didn’t wear shoes but even so we would walk to town on the gravel road. Our town didn’t have anything like a modern grocery store today, still don’t. The food we ate was fresh from the garden or canned by grama. Most of our food came from the summer garden along with eggs, chickens, cows, a calf, a pig, a goat, and a few sheep.
Two horses and the mule were the workers. Grampa didn’t believe in having a tractor. He used his 40 acres to grow potatoes, onions, sweet corn, tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupe and turnups to sell at stores. Lavern Kline farms the 40 acres now.
We would get to Bloomfield in grandpa’s horse-drawn wagon or hitch a ride with a neighbor who had an automobile. Grampa Fred had an old rickety truck that you started by cranking the engine by hand. He would take some of the crops to grocery stores in Bloomfield, Ottumwa, Burlington, and towns nearby. The store named Produce in Bloomfield bought some of his crops of potatoes and onions. They put it in sacks and sent them to Chicago by train.
Special stuff like sugar, spices, salt, etc. was purchased by grama with the money she raised from selling eggs. Grampa had two cows so we always had milk. We learned to milk the cows early. Uncle Mac had twelve cows. I could milk four in the time he milked eight. He sold the milk after we ran it through a separator to get the cream. Aunt Lilith made butter from the cream. Mac also had a herd of pigs. Sometimes he had as many as two hundred and fifty. He had a small tractor. It didn’t have rubber tires. The back wheels had metal spokes that grabbed into the dirt. He taught me to drive. That was a real big deal in those days.
I liked being at uncle Mac’s because the Checkerings were his neighbors. Bobby and Donny, the youngest of a large family were my age and we would have great times together fishing and swimming in the water-hole down at the creek. Their family farmed corn and beans like everybody else as well as raised and trained Shetland ponies to sell to circuses. I had my own pony all the time I was at Uncle Mac’s.
Brett, you would be surprised to have seen our town in those days. There used to be four churches in town. Everyone went to one or the other. Only one church is standing now. You lived at the corner of the park there on Mill Street. There used to be a big sawmill there. There were several buildings in the two blocks we called town. All but one is gone now. In fact, the building south of the fire station is the only one I remember that is left standing. You were here when they tore the last really old brick building down. In one building there was a drug store. Another had an ice cream parlor. The big store sold dry goods such as sugar, flour, coffee, baking powder, candy, molasses, cigars, tobacco, cheese, spices, cloth and sewing stuff, crackers, metal cookstoves, wood heating stoves, and a lot of other stuff. The old bank building is still standing. A few years ago, Larry Butler tried to make a grocery store out of the downstairs but it didn’t work out.
Every Wednesday night all the farm people in the area came to town, and the town folk gathered too. Most people came in horse-drawn wagons. The wagons would be lined up one next to the other on a slant in the middle of the road between the stores. The men would get together and talk farming stuff and the women would gather together. Shopping would get done and then loaded in the wagons. Us kids would play tag, kick the can, baseball, kickball, and a bunch of other games. We never had any money but we might get an ice cream cone if we had been good that week. A double-decker would cost ten cents. Course a dime was solid silver then.
The kids and adults from town would be there too. We all knew each other because we all went to the same old brick schoolhouse there east of town by the highway. The podcast I made, titled The 55 Issue tells about how all the independent schools in the county were replaced by the big one in Bloomfield.
My great-grandmother and two of my uncles were teachers in our local school at one time or another. They were certified teachers. The certification was obtained by attending a school called “Normal” in Bloomfield. “Normal” was what Teacher’s education was called in those days. Teaching was a good job that supplemented farming. It paid about $500 per school year.
The Park in our town has changed a lot. We only had swings and teeter-totters and a baseball diamond but no backstop. You were here when the town put in modern swings and a jungle gym for the kids. The basketball court has been there for a while and so was the new baseball field. The baseball field has lights now. The train station office was moved to the park when the rail lines were torn up. The blacksmith shop is gone forever. The pavilion where you can get in the shade or out of the rain is old. I don’t remember when it was built. It’s a great addition and lastly, a tractor pull area was built right across the street from where you used to live.
The kids today have all kinds of electronic toys, PC's, iPhones, pads. That changes things somewhat but the kids at the park don’t seem to bring them with them. They play, run, swing, play kickball, baseball, throw footballs, sit and talk, fight, yell, and generally have a good time; it’s just like we did when we were kids. They even have water fights as we did on really hot days. All you need is a water pump, some buckets to fill, and then splash over someone if you could catch them. Great fun.
During the war years, I mean World War 2, my dad moved us away to Portland Oregon then across the Columbia River to Vancouver Washington to get a good job in the shipyards. We lived in a new but temporary housing division built just for the people working at the shipyards. That time period was very different too. Both parents were working. We lived in a special housing area that was built just for the war effort. It wasn’t too well made. They tore it down right after the war. Many of the kid’s fathers were in the army and overseas fighting. Some were killed in action. There were black flags in the windows.
Us kids had a lot of time on our hands and we used it creatively – going down to the Columbia River, fishing streams nearby or just playing in the woods that was all around us. We had lots of adventures. I wrote a book about one of our adventures - it’s on Amazon. The title is The Trading post by James von Feldt.
A public school was built nearby. It was special because it was running seven days a week and late into the evening. There were lots of things to do after school like basketball, boxing, wrestling, all kinds of crafts, sewing, art, and music. They were trying to keep the kids busy while the parents worked.
But back to our town and the kids today; I don’t see much difference when they are out playing. They are creative, flexible, energetic, and full of ideas. They are always trying new games and things.
All summer long I see kids at our park. Parents are rarely with them. Everybody knows it’s safe in our town. The same goes for most of the small towns around here. Occasionally a family will be having a reunion and they will reserve the Pavilion. At that time, you would see a lot of adults in the park. When that happens, usually the town folk amble by just to visit.
One thing I notice that is definitely different in the big cities is that they have things organized for the kids. I’ve heard that they have T-ball, baseball, softball, and soccer teams. They segregate the kids by age. The older ones don’t play with the younger ones and they have fancy uniforms, coaches, umpires and the parents come to see the games. They have leagues all organized and trophies for the winners.
That’s big city stuff. It’s great, I guess, but our kids just play any way they want, any time they want. If they don’t like a game, they make up their own with their own rules.
Well Brett, I would have to agree that things are really different for you right now and yet the basics seem to me to be the same as they always were. People need friends, they need attention, they need challenges and they need love. Our 4th celebration is an expression of awe over the freedoms we experience.
What you are doing in Afghanistan right now means a lot to us. You are standing in the gap for freedom. Because of you and many like you-- away from home, wherever you are, we can celebrate the 4th in peace. We miss you and are looking forward to your visit home.
P.S. Don’t forget to write.
Lots of Love
Grampa Jim