Memorial Day Memory

We could hear the band coming down the street from the high school two blocks away. When it passed our house we knew it was time to leave. My mother and I walked north one block, then another. We crossed the gravel parking lot with the World War II tank parked by the VFW Hall next to the river. The Memorial Day commemoration was about to start. We stood on the bank and looked out at the huge floating cross that had been ferried to the middle of the river early that morning. The band played. The local veterans stood at attention. A small private plane swooped down over the crowd on the bridge and someone leaned out and dropped a large wreath of flowers in the middle of the floating cross. I can’t believe a plane flying so close to a crowd was considered in any way safe. The wreath always ended up perfectly in the middle of the cross.There was a salute of guns. Then the band led the crowd to the cemetery at the edge of town, where there were readings at a small replica of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow. Between the crosses, row on row,” intoned a local minister. I remember the yearly ritual so well. Our town had other parades but they were long ones. They had floats with lots of crepe paper decorations. Girls rode in convertibles and waved to the crowd. Candy was thrown. These were held during the summer when the town was filled with tourists from Milwaukee and Chicago. Our town went from a winter population of a thousand to nearly thirty thousand during the summer. The city schools hadn’t let out yet on Memorial Day and there was a sense of community I didn’t feel during the summer. Summer was exciting but it meant traffic snarling the two-block-long main street.  Shopkeepers kept smiling but tended to become testy as the season wore on. They were tired but knew they were dependent on the tourist industry for their livelihood. Summer was close. Right around the corner, in fact. But today, on Memorial day, the town still belonged to us.