Ken Griffey Jr.

The Fourth of July has long been one of my favorite holidays. I guess I never even considered it a holiday like Thanksgiving and Christmas. There’s a different feel to it. It’s lively and exciting, but it passes like a warm breeze over a Wisconsin lake. I got to thinking about the day and realized that, pretty much every year, the holiday means something new to me.

When I was young, it usually meant bratwursts and hamburgers after the Stone Bank parade. Sometimes people would gather at the farmhouse and hang out around the creaky deck while someone grilled the meat. The buns would be stacked up in a wicker basket lined with the red and white plaid cloth, the same way Mom demands that we display the vegetables at market. I must confess; it does have a rural charm to it.

It would sometimes warrant the hassle of putting up the lunky volleyball net that we could never get straight. No one would touch the net after we set it up for fear that it would collapse. People jumped in the pool and played with the foam noodles, splashing each other and hollering. Something tells me we were pushing the limits of the recommended 30-minmute digestion period after filling our guts with sausages.

Throughout high school, my focus became a more serious contemplation of patriotism and what it meant to be a citizen. I admit that I questioned and waivered for seven or eight years. I suppose I’m happy about that because I’m more confident in my decision now to pursue my goals in this country, in this state, in this county, town, and chunk of land.

But this Fourth of July was different. I woke early and took care of the chickens, a morning routine with which I love to start my day. A light fog slumped just above our land. The dew on the clover soaked my toes and my feet felt slimy. The chickens charged out of the coop and made their morning lap around me and the yard, then settled into their ground-pecking routine.

Then on to a hearty breakfast that has to contain Kale because we drastically underestimated the production of a single kale plant and we couldn’t give enough away to keep up with it. All morning, the three of us harvested produce for our Thursday CSA shares. We could have done some of it the previous day, but it’s rewarding to hand off an overflowing share of produce that was harvested and assembled fewer than two hours ago. There’s a certain amount of pride that we as farmers can take in that.

I felt an urge to do the delivery alone. Not sure why. But I loaded the coolers in the back of the truck and waited in an empty field in Stone Bank for our members to pick up their produce. People slowly filed in and were amazed at how much produce they were getting. I told them to get used to it because there’s no shortage at peak season. I sat in the back of the truck with my feet propped up on the bumper and read Coop by Michael Perry. He has become a favorite author who writes about his life in Wisconsin, a few hours northwest of here. The book is about moving to a new home, raising kids, and starting a small farm. He just bought pigs. Lucky.

At any rate, no matter what book I’m reading by Perry, I seem to discover countless parallels to my own life, although this book seems to be pretty directly related, only the kids I’m raising are feathered and peck at my toes. Although I see how our lives share similarities, today I found myself relating more to his daughter, a young and excited girl who is being raised with wholesome values in a rural lifestyle. She’s learning about chickens and stacking wood, the importance of relationships and why farmers don’t name their pigs. It reminded me a good bit of my running around in the barn as a kid, playing on haystacks and raking an acre’s worth of lawn. She spends her free time staring at frogs and asking questions. If she had corn fields to play in, like my brothers and I did, I’m sure she would have been making forts and getting lost in the rows, too. It’s fun to read a father’s perspective on it, deciding when to stop his daughter from doing something ridiculous or to let it go. Maybe it’s for the book’s story, but it sure does seem like he lets a lot happen on its own. The chapter I just finished explained how he walked away from his daughter while she played in a mud pit in her undies. I might have done that once or twice, too.

I looked around and realized I was spending my Independence Day alone on a tailgate in a mown field under the canopy of a box elder tree, hoping people remember to pick up their produce from me. But then I realized that the first baseball games I ever played were on that field. 20 or so years ago, I was taking my best hack at a ball set up on a tee, and often times missing. I walked around to check it all out. Only the chain link back stop was left and the box elder had taken over the “dugout” and third base. No pitcher’s mound, no bases, no benches anymore. Just a lawn maintained by the Tyme Out center. I stood in front of the back stop and took to the batter’s position with a high back elbow, then swung my imaginary bat in slow motion, sending the imaginary childhood baseball to the stars. How bizarre that my life had literally gone around the globe, even to some places I was sure I’d call home for good, and now here I was, back at the field where I learned how to strike out in tee ball, in a town that doesn’t even make it into a gazetteer. That box elder might have miles and miles of roots, but they all lead back to the same trunk. I suppose that seems more understandable now.

My CSA drop-off session finished up with about an hour of a radio program that played a full Willie Nelson concert in which he played all my favorites like “Me and Paul,” “My Own Peculiar Way,” and “City of New Orleans.” He even played a few old-timey gospel tunes that he jazzed up with that signature bluesy effortlessness. He’s got a way about him that reminds me I’m still a kid.

Heading home via the long way, I concluded that this had been one of the best Fourth of Julys of my life.  I just hope the Harley bikers didn’t see me running the non-existant bases, doing my best Ken Griffey Jr. Even if they did, I’m sure some of them understood.