WHAT DOES THE FOURTH OF JULY MEAN TO YOU ?

                                     

I have always remembered a particular 4th of July celebration when I was a youngster growing up in Staples Minnesota back in the fifties. That year the National Guard brought a tank to be in the annual parade. It was the biggest war machine I had ever seen, coming down old highway 10 on rubber treads, with its own contingent of soldiers behind it. Just before it got to the semaphore that used to be at fourth street north, they shot off that big gun. It was a blank charge for sure, because had it not been, it probably would have blown up the Farmers Oil Station on the west end of town. As it was, the concussion, rattled and broke store windows downtown. The doors to the Legion and Vets club slammed open and startled World War II vets came running out into the afternoon sun. They were sure the peace they had fought so hard for, was in jeopardy again.

It’s hard to imagine what it sounds like when a tank shoots off that big gun, unless you have heard it. It’s hard to imagine, shooting that cannon at other people but they often did, in the heat of battle. That day the big gun was shot of in a celebratory way because only a few years before our country had won the biggest war of all time. Yes our freedom, our very way of life, had been threatened and we stiffened and bristled at the foe and said, “Not as long as we remember what freedom is all about.”

We have threats against our country almost every day now, but they seem minuscule to what we faced then. Not that they’re aren’t serious threats against our country now but our whole attitude has changed and left me wondering, if freedom isn’t valued today, the same way it was back then. We have had many wars since then but they seemed to be more of a distraction to people then a threat. Some of them were politicians wars and some of them were in response to a threat against us but in the end there never was a victory celebration and you know what?  Maybe that was because there never was a clear-cut victory and maybe it was because when your house is divided against itself, as ours was then, and is now, no one really gives a rip. No one but the brave soldiers who died, just as dead in Korea and Vietnam and the Middle East as those who were cut down and bobbed in the surf at Normandy and Iwo Jima. No one was hurt more then those who came home from Viet Nam to be spit on and scourged, by an ungrateful public.

In a few years we will bury the last of the World War II veterans. We will forget about Rosie the Riveter and ration stamps and liberty ships and flying fortresses. We will forget about young men and women who lied their ages for a chance to go off to war, out of a sense of duty. We will forget about Gold Star Mothers who proudly wore their lapel pins, wet with their tears of sorrow and pride. History books will abbreviate the story, because well--it just won’t be that much of a story anymore. Gravestones will be forgotten and covered with moss. Why is it that you have to be at the point of losing your freedoms, before they become important to you again? This Fourth of July, People   will go to the lake to shoot off bottle rockets and ewe and awe at the fireworks. They will drive by shuttered Legion and Vets clubs, as the ones in Staples are and the thing they will celebrate the most-- is the four-day weekend.