July 4, 2008

For most of my childhood, July 4th holidays created "fun" memories... those early days in Indiana before fireworks were illegal, and, doggone it, we had the gawd-given right to blow our little fingers right off if we felt like it!

Indiana in the 1950's - Solid MidWest America - was perhaps THE definition of post-WWII U.S.A.. I don't know. Maybe EVERYWHERE was, somehow. It's ALL I knew at the time...but thinking back, it still seems like THE place to grow up (despite the rough winters, summer humidity, gnats and 'skeeters). (The film "A Christmas Story" is goose-pimply near-identical to MY early, northern Indiana life.) Our neighborhood was filled with young adults - younger than all of us reading this now - who'd survived the Great Depression and World War II. They were all busy making babies at the same time...especially in my neighborhood of almost all Polish immigrant descendants and dedicated Catholics.

Our neighborhood was an ant pile of activity. The kids knew none of the fears that are now so prominent. We didn't think about whether we were rich or poor. We didn't have to stay in our yard. The doors weren't locked. We could be gone all day. We had permission to go into anyone's home, and, other adults had assumed permission to discipline us. We played much the time... mainly out of doors, of course. We learned, by some weird childhood/genetic/grapevine-through-the-ages osmosis phenomenon, kid's Group Games - like "Red Rover Red Rover", "Hide and Seek", "Mumbly Peg", and our own version of Baseball. How DOES that happen? But, most of the time we made up our own games. There was "Sandbox Army Man Rubber Band Slaughter", "Catalpa Bean Slap Each Other on the Back Screaming Pain", "Metal Clamp-on Sidewalk Skating Until Your Feet Feel Numb", "Shake the Lightning Bugs to Death in a Jar at Night", and "Teddy Saves His Pee in a Mason Jar".

Uh... you did that TOO, right?

During the hot afternoons, the "popsicle man" (all of maybe 14 years old) came around on a special peddle bicycle-with-freezer vehicle outfitted with a metal ringy-bell and coin changer right there on the handlebar. You KNEW his name. THIS Big Kid mattered. The "Milk Man" came around very early in the morning when the birds were loudest and us kids were still forming a day-of-play plan. While he'd deliver the glass bottle/cardboard stoppered milk to the rear of each home, us kids would jump into the back of his truck and take big, clear, beautiful chunks of ice. This is what kept his milk cold. (No refrigeration in those early deliveries.) That ice was SO COLD in our hands it was painful, but was the BEST tasting ice of all time.

It was puuurrrrrrrrre.

Being Indiana - nasty hot and goddawful humid in the summer - the Mail Man worked hard carrying all that real mail (no wimpy "e"mail) in his large, heavy, worn, tan leather bag. Our Moms would always offer him ice water. I'm sure he accepted the refreshment in a democratic style, as to not offend anyone. (Hmm... you know....... A LOT of popsicle, milk, and 'male' MEN came around during the day...while our Dads were gone to work..... and... come to think of it, I've always had a special thing for mail order ice milk on a stick...

.....................................................nah...............

Anyhow, I still can envision nearly every square foot of that entire neighborhood and its surrounding fields and woods. Us kids LIVED there. We were ALIVE there. We were OF this land - manicured and wild both. I knew the bark's designs on each tree; where the first Lilly of the Valley, Crocus, and wild Apple blossoms would arrive in early Spring; which Lilac bush smelled the sweetest; where the grasshoppers liked to sing when the sun was high; where the wild Strawberries ripened best; which of all the trees first "turned" in the Fall, gave us the finest wild Plums, or held the vines that dangled the least tart wild purple Grapes; and, whose home or garage roof edge produced the biggest, best, most dangerous icicles during the rare, short, midday Winter melt.

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We tumbled through those days of undistracted freedom without ever having to think about it. Our parents, Grandparents, and those before them lived, and died, to help make our taking these moments for granted. July 4th, for me, is NOT about frayed flags still flying over a fort. For me, now, July 4th is about all the people below those flying colors, living and dead, who made it possible for me to be oblivious and innocent - if for only a few short, sweet years.

Now it's on me to somehow do MY part for the next group - allowing them their chance to happily and securely take their lives for granted... for a few short, sweet years.