Exira Sesquicentennial Special: Personal Memories from the Fourth
Ladies and gentlemen, gentle readers worldwide! Unfortunately I missed the transmission from young Lynn Nelson direct from the Exira Sesquicentennial festivities this morning (Iowa time), so I will be compiling this last Exira Sesquicentennial Special not on the basis of his reports, which we will share with you later, provided he provides us with material, but instead on my reflections upon the little town of Exira and its Fourth of July celebrations.
I first started going to the Fourth of July with my parents. Mom would fry some chicken, make some potato salad, and we would pile in the car and head west into town. The town literally grows from around 1000 to perhaps 20,000 on that day, and it is likely the only time you will ever have trouble finding a parking space in Exira. We would go to my Great-Aunt Lizzie Petersen's place on West Washington St., also known in Exira as Main St., but the real Main St. is a block south where the Christian Church stands. Anyhow, we would show up and find a place on the lawn to set up the appropriately-named lawn chairs to watch the parade, which started just around the corner at the city park, promptly at 10:30 a.m. A delicious, picnic-style dinner (not lunch, mind you!) followed, while in the afternoon such activities as horseshoe pitching were undertaken by the men, the women gossiped and the kids begged for a few bucks to blow at the carnival uptown. That night, we would go to the city park for entertainment on stage, some lucky guy would win a car in a drawing, and the fireworks, shot from the football field by the fire department, would light up the twilight sky.
In contrast, the last time I was there for the festivities was 1997, when I visited from Fort Leavenworth. No, I wasn't out on parole, but instead had the typical 4-day pass from the military powers-that-be, escaping the dreary bluffs along the Missouri and journeying 3-1/2 hours northward to my hometown. I was accompanied by Jim Farrell, fellow Quartermaster officer and native Long Islander, so his visit was rather of a sociological nature, exposing him briefly to life in a Midwestern small town for the first (and possibly the last) time. We took in the obligatory parade, which had unfortunately gotten away from the "beautiful floats" mentioned in yesterday's post to what often seemed an unending stream of shiny cars and farm equipment. The Exira band led the parade as usual, and my friend, John Walker, Exira English teacher extraordinaire, followed them in his red convertible carrying the Grand Marshals. Much of Jim's and my time was spent, however, in the darkened pool room of what was then Jerry's Joint, now Uncle Jerry's, renamed following the unexpected death of the proprietor, Jerry Johnson.
When I was a kid, the big things about the Fourth in Exira were 1) the parade, where the reason for coming was the candy, thrown from some of the remaining floats, 2) the midway, where huckster "carnies" tried to take your money at games of chance, or alternatively, you could risk your life on such contraptions as the Tilt-o-Whirl and the Scrambler, and 3) the fireworks, absent General Logan but usually interesting nonetheless. As I grew older, my reasons for coming included 1) the parade, where beer had replaced bonbons, since young adults shoving little kids out of the way for Tootsie Rolls were frowned upon, 2) the midway, where a wide variety of nubile, young farm girls from this and neighboring towns mingled and 3) the fireworks, although they were not enjoyed from the city park as in the past but instead from the Legion Park, where a "street" dance, absent the street, was held. (It was held on the tennis court.) There were plenty of "fireworks", however, in the form of fights between small towns, usually over the nubile, young farm girls. For example, Audubon would fight Exira, Atlantic would fight Audubon and everyone would fight Elk Horn. So it was that I never missed an Exira Fourth of July until 1989, when I was stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. I remember reflecting upon the nubile farm girls as I "humped a ruck" (not what you're thinking!) in the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest.
I returned to Exira in 1990, this time with Scott Peterson, a buddy from college who originally hailed from Walnut, but after what the Germans call "Frühschoppen", i.e. drinking before noon, we headed down to Anita, Iowa to join another friend, Kevin Brocker, on his old man's boat on the aptly-named Lake Anita. What do I remember, aside from getting snockered? Kevin had his cute, red headed girlfriend of the summer with him, and she kept sharing with Scott and me visions of what I consider one of the finest delicacies on the planet, red snapper. Those white shorts of hers were just that: short.
I think that 1991 may have been the second to the last time I was in Exira for the Fourth. That was the occasion of my fifth year high school reunion. Instead of showing up with tales of success, pictures of the wife and kids and the new pickup, I showed up telling the same tale I could have told them at any point after high school graduation. "Uh, I'm still in college." That being said, I want all young people to know that your college days may be the best time you will ever have. I mean it. Prolong the good times if you can. It's all downhill from there. Responsibility sucks.
In 1992 I made the radical decision to stay in Ames over the Fourth. That was radical as you must remember that I had only missed one Exira Fourth of July celebration in the past 24 years. The previous evening, I enjoyed the hard rocking sounds of California girl grunge band, L7, at Hairy Mary's in Des Moines. The experience was definitely enhanced by a bit of psilocybin. The next day, my roommate, Guy, and I spent the afternoon with Jim and Ivy at some professor's house, where they were housesitting south of Ames. Guy and I also partook of the fungi that afternoon, which made our hike overland to the fireworks next to the football stadium even more interesting. The fireworks were much better than Exira's, and I not just speaking from the perspective of hallucinations. However, what I could not stomach was a poor-quality sound show of patriotic bullshit compiled by either the ISU Young Republicans or the John Birch Society, take your pick. This was the year after the Bush I's Mesopotamian War, and the propaganda was just too much. My paranoia really increased as I was making shit of the announcer when suddenly spotlights were beamed upon us sitting in the grass. It was like that weird dream where the guv'ment finally arrives in black helicopters to take you to places beyond Guantanamo. As it happened, it was just a car turning on its headlights. Hallucinations can be that way, but later that evening, all four of us hallucinated the same thing, which is amazing considering that Jim and Ivy did not partake of the sacrament. As we continued our march through "wild" Ames, we wandered into the south part of the Arboretum when all of us thought that a gang of bikers on Harleys was waiting for us at the end of the trail. We froze, not knowing if we should keep on trekking or run like hell. I guess we made the right decision as the bikers and Harleys turned out to be nothing more than some tree detritus bulldozed into a pile. That being said, we all thought we were going to get our asses kicked. Very strange.
1993 saw me entering the Army and ending up far from Exira on the East Coast, but the Fourth of July was a memorable one. Tony Bochicchio and I attended the 130th anniversary re-enactment in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Fourth of July has seen some interesting U.S. military history as well. In 1863, the Fourth of July was the turning point in the war as the South blew its gray load at Gettysburg while Vicksburg simultaneously fell to the Union in the western theater. In contrast, at the U.S. Centennial celebrations in 1876, word finally reached the celebrants in Philadelphia on the Fourth that Custer's command had been wiped out in the hills of what would soon be Montana. After returning that evening to Baltimore, Tony, his then girlfriend and I watched the fireworks over the city's Inner Harbor. These were some of the best pyrotechnics I had witnessed, as some of them burst into shapes like five-pointed stars and peace symbols.
When I was in the Army in Germany, I don't think I really ever celebrated the Fourth of July. Maybe it is like today, being in a foreign country where it isn't a holiday, although we usually had a 4-day weekend and the Army post had a celebration. Loren Christensen and I climbed a mountain near Lofer, Austria in 1994. In 1995, we played guitar and sang among the neo-classical facades of Munich's Königplatz, after a devastating round of Frühschoppen at the Hofbräuhaus. The Fourth of July in 1996 found me at Tazar Air Base in Hungary; I had the day off so I slept in, avoiding the celebrations.
My Independence Day celebrations since 1997 have been sadly uneventful. When we lived in State College, Pennsylvania, we attended the outstanding fireworks display there, set to classical music, which beats the hell out of the John Birch Society. At the same time though, I miss fireworks without commentary or music as was the case in the lovely town of Exira. Why do you have to have an audio track for stuff that is cool without it? Let the "oohs" and "ahs" of the spectators provide the accompaniment, interspersed with jovial conversation, the chirps of a few crickets and perhaps the pleasant *crack* of an opening beer can.
Now, in my expatriate life, the Fourth passes me by like any other day. As I sit in Deutschland at the end of what was a workday, I will miss the parade, the picnics, the wonderful atmosphere of Exira on the Fourth. And I will especially miss those fireworks. Perhaps someday I'll be back to see them again.
I first started going to the Fourth of July with my parents. Mom would fry some chicken, make some potato salad, and we would pile in the car and head west into town. The town literally grows from around 1000 to perhaps 20,000 on that day, and it is likely the only time you will ever have trouble finding a parking space in Exira. We would go to my Great-Aunt Lizzie Petersen's place on West Washington St., also known in Exira as Main St., but the real Main St. is a block south where the Christian Church stands. Anyhow, we would show up and find a place on the lawn to set up the appropriately-named lawn chairs to watch the parade, which started just around the corner at the city park, promptly at 10:30 a.m. A delicious, picnic-style dinner (not lunch, mind you!) followed, while in the afternoon such activities as horseshoe pitching were undertaken by the men, the women gossiped and the kids begged for a few bucks to blow at the carnival uptown. That night, we would go to the city park for entertainment on stage, some lucky guy would win a car in a drawing, and the fireworks, shot from the football field by the fire department, would light up the twilight sky.
In contrast, the last time I was there for the festivities was 1997, when I visited from Fort Leavenworth. No, I wasn't out on parole, but instead had the typical 4-day pass from the military powers-that-be, escaping the dreary bluffs along the Missouri and journeying 3-1/2 hours northward to my hometown. I was accompanied by Jim Farrell, fellow Quartermaster officer and native Long Islander, so his visit was rather of a sociological nature, exposing him briefly to life in a Midwestern small town for the first (and possibly the last) time. We took in the obligatory parade, which had unfortunately gotten away from the "beautiful floats" mentioned in yesterday's post to what often seemed an unending stream of shiny cars and farm equipment. The Exira band led the parade as usual, and my friend, John Walker, Exira English teacher extraordinaire, followed them in his red convertible carrying the Grand Marshals. Much of Jim's and my time was spent, however, in the darkened pool room of what was then Jerry's Joint, now Uncle Jerry's, renamed following the unexpected death of the proprietor, Jerry Johnson.
When I was a kid, the big things about the Fourth in Exira were 1) the parade, where the reason for coming was the candy, thrown from some of the remaining floats, 2) the midway, where huckster "carnies" tried to take your money at games of chance, or alternatively, you could risk your life on such contraptions as the Tilt-o-Whirl and the Scrambler, and 3) the fireworks, absent General Logan but usually interesting nonetheless. As I grew older, my reasons for coming included 1) the parade, where beer had replaced bonbons, since young adults shoving little kids out of the way for Tootsie Rolls were frowned upon, 2) the midway, where a wide variety of nubile, young farm girls from this and neighboring towns mingled and 3) the fireworks, although they were not enjoyed from the city park as in the past but instead from the Legion Park, where a "street" dance, absent the street, was held. (It was held on the tennis court.) There were plenty of "fireworks", however, in the form of fights between small towns, usually over the nubile, young farm girls. For example, Audubon would fight Exira, Atlantic would fight Audubon and everyone would fight Elk Horn. So it was that I never missed an Exira Fourth of July until 1989, when I was stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. I remember reflecting upon the nubile farm girls as I "humped a ruck" (not what you're thinking!) in the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest.
I returned to Exira in 1990, this time with Scott Peterson, a buddy from college who originally hailed from Walnut, but after what the Germans call "Frühschoppen", i.e. drinking before noon, we headed down to Anita, Iowa to join another friend, Kevin Brocker, on his old man's boat on the aptly-named Lake Anita. What do I remember, aside from getting snockered? Kevin had his cute, red headed girlfriend of the summer with him, and she kept sharing with Scott and me visions of what I consider one of the finest delicacies on the planet, red snapper. Those white shorts of hers were just that: short.
I think that 1991 may have been the second to the last time I was in Exira for the Fourth. That was the occasion of my fifth year high school reunion. Instead of showing up with tales of success, pictures of the wife and kids and the new pickup, I showed up telling the same tale I could have told them at any point after high school graduation. "Uh, I'm still in college." That being said, I want all young people to know that your college days may be the best time you will ever have. I mean it. Prolong the good times if you can. It's all downhill from there. Responsibility sucks.
In 1992 I made the radical decision to stay in Ames over the Fourth. That was radical as you must remember that I had only missed one Exira Fourth of July celebration in the past 24 years. The previous evening, I enjoyed the hard rocking sounds of California girl grunge band, L7, at Hairy Mary's in Des Moines. The experience was definitely enhanced by a bit of psilocybin. The next day, my roommate, Guy, and I spent the afternoon with Jim and Ivy at some professor's house, where they were housesitting south of Ames. Guy and I also partook of the fungi that afternoon, which made our hike overland to the fireworks next to the football stadium even more interesting. The fireworks were much better than Exira's, and I not just speaking from the perspective of hallucinations. However, what I could not stomach was a poor-quality sound show of patriotic bullshit compiled by either the ISU Young Republicans or the John Birch Society, take your pick. This was the year after the Bush I's Mesopotamian War, and the propaganda was just too much. My paranoia really increased as I was making shit of the announcer when suddenly spotlights were beamed upon us sitting in the grass. It was like that weird dream where the guv'ment finally arrives in black helicopters to take you to places beyond Guantanamo. As it happened, it was just a car turning on its headlights. Hallucinations can be that way, but later that evening, all four of us hallucinated the same thing, which is amazing considering that Jim and Ivy did not partake of the sacrament. As we continued our march through "wild" Ames, we wandered into the south part of the Arboretum when all of us thought that a gang of bikers on Harleys was waiting for us at the end of the trail. We froze, not knowing if we should keep on trekking or run like hell. I guess we made the right decision as the bikers and Harleys turned out to be nothing more than some tree detritus bulldozed into a pile. That being said, we all thought we were going to get our asses kicked. Very strange.
1993 saw me entering the Army and ending up far from Exira on the East Coast, but the Fourth of July was a memorable one. Tony Bochicchio and I attended the 130th anniversary re-enactment in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Fourth of July has seen some interesting U.S. military history as well. In 1863, the Fourth of July was the turning point in the war as the South blew its gray load at Gettysburg while Vicksburg simultaneously fell to the Union in the western theater. In contrast, at the U.S. Centennial celebrations in 1876, word finally reached the celebrants in Philadelphia on the Fourth that Custer's command had been wiped out in the hills of what would soon be Montana. After returning that evening to Baltimore, Tony, his then girlfriend and I watched the fireworks over the city's Inner Harbor. These were some of the best pyrotechnics I had witnessed, as some of them burst into shapes like five-pointed stars and peace symbols.
When I was in the Army in Germany, I don't think I really ever celebrated the Fourth of July. Maybe it is like today, being in a foreign country where it isn't a holiday, although we usually had a 4-day weekend and the Army post had a celebration. Loren Christensen and I climbed a mountain near Lofer, Austria in 1994. In 1995, we played guitar and sang among the neo-classical facades of Munich's Königplatz, after a devastating round of Frühschoppen at the Hofbräuhaus. The Fourth of July in 1996 found me at Tazar Air Base in Hungary; I had the day off so I slept in, avoiding the celebrations.
My Independence Day celebrations since 1997 have been sadly uneventful. When we lived in State College, Pennsylvania, we attended the outstanding fireworks display there, set to classical music, which beats the hell out of the John Birch Society. At the same time though, I miss fireworks without commentary or music as was the case in the lovely town of Exira. Why do you have to have an audio track for stuff that is cool without it? Let the "oohs" and "ahs" of the spectators provide the accompaniment, interspersed with jovial conversation, the chirps of a few crickets and perhaps the pleasant *crack* of an opening beer can.
Now, in my expatriate life, the Fourth passes me by like any other day. As I sit in Deutschland at the end of what was a workday, I will miss the parade, the picnics, the wonderful atmosphere of Exira on the Fourth. And I will especially miss those fireworks. Perhaps someday I'll be back to see them again.
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