Dear Friends of the Good Old Days,

It is perhaps hard to imagine today, but there was a time when hometown celebrations revolved around holidays. It's equally hard to imagine, but those celebrations also brought virtually everything else in town to a standstill. It's easy to explain why. First, there were fewer observed holidays where people actually got time off. Back then it was necessary to work longer hours and more days just to keep a roof over your head and food on the family table. That meant that, when you did get a holiday off from work, it was truly cause for a celebration.

Besides getting off every Sunday, my father worked at the lumberyard where he was employed every day of the year other than New Year's Day, Decoration Day (now Memorial Day), Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. When a holiday did come around, it was a holiday for everyone, or so it seemed. That meant schoolmates, friends and family were all released from the rigors of reality for a sweet 24-hour period of freedom -- and the whole community made the best of it.

Take Memorial Day as an example. When Janice and I were young, the celebration (then observed on May 30) began as families and veterans' groups went to every cemetery in town and throughout the county to place flags on the graves of dead patriots. In some bigger towns there were special streetcars to transport the entourage with much fanfare.

I was a Boy Scout, so I always helped with the flag placement. It taught me to take pride in this great country and to revere those men and women who had fought and died to protect all of us and our freedom. It also imbued me with thankfulness to God for the blessings He had given us through the faithfulness of our forebears. After the cemeteries were decorated, a parade down Main Street culminated in the center of town.

After the parade, folks would gather for patriotic speeches and recognition of veterans. Many of our younger generation would hardly believe it, but it doesn't seem that long ago when Civil War veterans celebrated with World War I veterans in doughboy green. Every year we all sadly watched those Blue and Gray ranks dwindle and disappear; today very few veterans of the "war to end all wars" survive.

The holiday ended with another ubiquitous part of most holidays -- a concert in the bandstand on the courthouse square.

Today Memorial Day has been reduced to another reason for a three-day weekend. Some of our young folks help old-timers like me go out and decorate cemeteries, but it's not the kind of family and community holiday that it once was, when holidays pulled us all together in family, community and national pride. How I miss those hometown celebrations from the Good Old Days!

'Til next time,