JULY 4th
Many holidays bring special memories. My only sister, Vivian, was a Valentine; my parents were married on Christmas Day; Tammy, my younger daughter, and I were born on Labor Day; my niece Mary Jean (Dick and Sue’s girl) interrupted Thanksgiving dinner in South Bend, Indiana, to join and help enlarge the family; granddaughter Jesska (Jessica then) was born to Lori and Sean on St. Patrick’s Day in Honolulu. When you add Baha’i holy days, there are lots more. But my father, who died thirty years ago, was BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. I went alone to see the Tom Cruise movie when it first came out—knew Margaret wouldn’t like to see it—and I sat and shivered through most of it. I’m just too much a gentle man to stand such films. I thought I should see Saving Private Ryan since my three oldest brothers fought in that war; so I rented the video and started it, stopped, started where I’d left off, and gave up after seeing only about twenty minutes of the film.
But I meant to write about the 4th, since it is coming around again. A group I belong to is studying ways to bring the fine arts into worship efforts, and as a project, each member was asked to contribute something from the arts to the July 4th worship service. Margaret is, of course, presenting some music—Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” from my collection of ‘Oldies’ and the hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth” with the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphonic Choir. I am reading a poem I wrote about our bicentennial celebration on July 4, 1976. I decided to preface it with a tribute to our parents (mostly Margaret’s parents who took us that day to a quiet place where no hint of modern society tainted. Here are the two efforts, the first is poetic prose; the second, my poem from that time.
A GLANCE BACKWARDS
Walter Joseph and Eudora Leona Legler Goldsmith were godly folks
As were my parents, Earl McKinley Rhoades, born on the fourth of July, 1895,
And Goldie Forest Bisel Rhoades, whose mother passed onto her
That healing power that could only be given to one who had never—
Ever used the Lord’s name in vain. She said “ither” for either and “nither” for neither,
”Zinc” for sink, “chimbley” and “warsh”—oh, she was a plain-spoken woman,
But she swayed the hearts when she spoke of godly things.
Walter, so very modest, had been a teacher, a principal, a superintendent
When he met a forceful, strong-headed old maid chemistry teacher
Who swept him off his bachelor feet, along with the great depression,
And joined him in a move to a small Montana town where they made a difference.
They bought an abandoned school in nearby Fresno, and, aided by needy,
Dollar-a-day men, tore it down and reclaimed its many building parts.
For awhile there in the early ‘30’s, joining brother Victor, they became builders,
Leaving in their wake four houses and three “downtown” stores.
Then they were merchants and began their family while living in the upper region
Of their Gambles Hardware Store until their home was ready for them.
So they lived out their wonderful, adventures in a place they had impacted,
Selling windmills and gas powered appliances to farmers without other power.
Walter erected the windmills, and they lived simply, clinging to many relics of the past—
Her ringer washing machine and tubs in the basement, clothesline in the yard;
Her first-of-its-kind portable dishwasher in the kitchen, and, looming large
In the sunroom, her top-of-the-line sewing machine and her loom.
They taught neighborhood children in Sunday School, sending them to camp
In the summers and giving anonymous “full rides” to the church college in Iowa,
Where Walter served on the board of trustees. She taught the nearby children,
Who came, rang a bell in back, entered quietly and went to work, to “make rugs”
To sell for money to go to Hell’s Canyon to meet Christian children and learn things.
Wally—no one called him that but her—learned to fly an airplane, though he never
Drove a car very well, and gave their two daughters piano lessons and bought them high quality
instruments so they might become pianists A clarinetist, a violinist, a flautist, a cellist
and outstanding musicians to this day. Virginia, living in Oklahoma, once retired from
teaching needy children to read, went back to school to earn a second Bachelor’s degree and,
in her seventies, another Master’s, this time in piano performance.
So both their daughters taught and passed things on.
In their mid-fifties, they bought a farm out by Snake Butte, drove miles on unpaved roads,
Bought two old 1939 orange Allis-Chalmer tractors (one for parts to mend the other’s ills),
And became “pioneers” again, side by side on a thousand acres of dry-land wheat strips.
During those twenty-five years that Walter served as the mayor, fighting for “curbs and gutters”
And paving the streets as the town became a larger dot on the Montana state map.
He served on the school board where half the students were Gros Ventre and Assiniboine (Sioux) Indians
From nearby Fort Belknap Indian Reservation with such names as Pete Stiffarm and Walter Blackbird.
And on July 4, 1976, Walter and Leona Goldsmith took those city folk school teachers, Jack and Margaret Rhoades and their two sons and two daughters into the small Little Rockies Mountains, past an old mission, sort of Spanish looking, into the throes of Mission Canyon for a day away from the hustle and bustle of life as those children knew it for a glimpse into the past.
Jack Rhoades, July 2, 2010
JULY 4, 1976
We felt ourselves possessors of a private mountain.
A water track had led us to the top, where other,
Lesser mountains could be viewed,
And, called to, shout back in mocking mirth,
Bouncing rapidly till five or six replies reverberated.
We felt the ownership one knows on mountaintops,
Forgetting that this quaint mountain had been conquered many times before,
And, though we claimed it for our present joy and memory’s pleasure,
We would not cling to it as one does to tainting treasures.
Knowing this–but not in words or thoughts–
We darted downward as drops of melted snow
That could not stop to rest
Until the stream below–icy in July heat–was met
And self was swallowed by the shock and rapid racing onward.
Numbness awakened us to separate ourselves
And conquer even greater challenges: a sunny natural bridge mightily aloft,
A dark crater, hidden in high crags, that beckoned.
Then, horns shrieking, the impatience of today commanded us.
We could no longer leave our century behind
But hastened homeward in cool, refreshing, air-conditioned bliss,
Thinking that our bicentennial party, without fireworks or flag,
Embraced a pioneer spirit such as had proclaimed this independence.
There lingered, strangely, on my tongue
A bittersweet of berries stolen from the birds,
Tasting, somehow, like the mountain woods had smelled.
Then we crossed a shallow ford, turned a mighty bend,
And left the canyon behind.
September, 1976
So I just thought maybe sharing these today might leave you with a lingering smell of the past that might feel a little patriotic. Searching through my many LP records on the garage shelving, I came across one called “THE SPIRIT OF ‘76”, but there were no revolutionary songs, rather Civil War Era songs that hinted of division in the United States of America. Interesting, huh? Another was “AMERICAN INDIAN CEREMONIAL AND WAR DANCES.” I couldn’t see fitting that into the worship service, but I was glad it was in there nevertheless. Perhaps I’ll listen to it today when I’m creating CD’s of Kate Smith, etc., on the handy machine that does that.
Probably not too many folks have turntables any more (I have only two), but I see them in the stores again. Just to have it, I bought a video disc player and a few of those electronic video discs, but have never hooked it up and tried it out. When we moved here to North Carolina from Kentucky, my son-in-law’s father, Art Stanwood, helped me unload a truck or two, and, after unloading many boxes of vinyl records, he said, (he was a technical genius who worked as project manager for Bank of America) “I do hope you realize that these things are really terribly obsolete.”
I knew that. I had started collected them for the beautiful artwork on their covers, and when the libraries began to sell them for a dime, I got more serious. Habitat for Humanity still sells them for a quarter, but at Salvation Army, I might have to pay a dollar or more. I have many poets reading their own works and deceased actors and singers performing amazing things. Erna Sack, the Swedish Nightingale, for example, emulates a flute or piccolo when she goes into her magnificent high register.
