Letters to the Editor, The Daily News

Dear Editor: May 24, 2000

When I was a boy in Central Illinois, in a town smaller than Los Molinos, the marker dividing the end of school and the beginning of summer was the Memorial Day parade, which was held not on the artificially-created Monday of a three-day weekend, but on Memorial Day itself, be it a Saturday, Sunday, or Wednesday. No matter what the day of the week, routine was stopped so that the whole town could celebrate a special day.

The parade itself stretched only a few blocks, for after all, main street was not much longer. It started with the American Legion color guard, men we all knew, often the fathers of friends, who looked somehow different — even resplendent — in uniforms that were stretched to cover bellies hanging from a bit-too-indulgent lifestyle. But after all, they had gone away and fought to preserve their lifestyle and ours, too, so no one spoke, or even thought, ill of them.

Next came the high school band, maybe 30 strong — 40 in a good year. They wore dark maroon uniforms of wool passed from generation to generation and stored in the mothballed band closet when not at work. On some Memorial Days, the Midwest weather could reach 95-twice (95 Fahrenheit and 95 percent humidity), and on those days the band literally sweltered.

But they played, and perhaps it sounded so wonderful because our hearts were opened and tear ducts flooded as first the colors passed, followed closely by the oom-pahs of "Stars and Stripes Forever." Behind the band was a convertible or two carrying a parade marshal, some veterans who were too feeble to walk, and perhaps a buxom dowager. (No young girls rode; they could walk as well as anyone else, and if they showed too much skin or curves they’d be lectured by so many diverse people that they’d run home to change.)

Next came all the veterans of WWI, WWII, and the Korean War, which had just recently ended. And finally came all the kids, who just couldn’t sit still and let a parade go by without joining in. The parents usually started to run after their kids, but then joined in the mélange and encouraged all the onlookers to march, which most did. After five or six blocks, the kids crammed into school busses and the adults piled into their cars and trucks for the two mile drive to Oak Grove Cemetery.

There we’d gather at the War Memorial section and listen to old Hugh Deffenbach, a World War I vet, read "In Flanders Field." (I first hear him read it when I was 7; he was still going strong, though with a feebler voice, when I was 17; he might still be there — and come to think of it, he surely is.)

Then everyone would get an artificial poppy (for "the poppies grow, in Flanders Field"), we’d have prayers by the local clergy (the ACLU was still confined to pacifist and socialist activities in New York), and the color guard would fire their rifles in three volleys (startling all of us even though our eyes were glued to their trigger fingers). After this, we’d hear a mournful "Taps" from a trumpet player, echoed by another who’d sneaked to the back of the cemetery.

Next the band played WWI songs, such as "Over There," and all the uniformed Boy and Girl Scouts, Cubs, and Brownies took flowers to put on those graves so marked with the symbol of national service, the American flag. That done, people would go their own way, some to linger at the sites of loved ones, others to head home and try to escape the heat by staying outdoors as they tuned their screeching, squalling AM radios the best they could to hear the constant Doppler-like drone of the cars driving the bricks at the Indianapolis 500.

Since television wasn’t around our area yet, the evening was spent enjoying whatever breeze might waft our way while the old folks told stories and the youngsters frolicked on the grass and tried to catch fireflies. Hand-made ice cream had not made a big comeback yet, but watermelons have never been out of style, nor have watermelon seed fights. Finally when we plopped into bed, it seemed as if all were right with the world.

Not only did this ceremony mark the beginning of summertime for the kids, it also taught by example respect for authority, for elders, for soldiers, and in short, for our culture. It reminded us that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" (paraphrasing John Philpot Curran, Elmer Davis, and maybe even Jefferson) and that Patrick Henry really meant it — really — when he said, "Give me liberty, or give me death." And what’s more, it brought the community together in that silent, subtle, and salubrious way by which tradition impresses its importance upon us.

This coming Monday, May 29, Red Bluff will have a similar ceremony at Oak Hill Cemetery out on Walnut Street at 11 a.m. Instead of Hugh reading his poem, others will give short speeches. Instead of a band, Pastor Mark Franklin’s choir will sing, and as always, when the "honoring the services" medley comes up, the moderator will miss the cue for telling all the Army veterans to stand up but will recover in time to call for the vets of the lesser (cough, cough) services to be recognized. The same people as last year will be there, as they were in the preceding years.