Memorial Day and 4th of July
Memorial Day
Every spring when the peonies bloom and I smell their rich fragrance it compels me to think of Knightstown on Memorial Day. It’s automatic. I can’t help it….. Flossie Havens, our neighbor, had a row of peony bushes in her back yard about 70 feet long. They were in peak bloom in the last week in May and what a wonderful smell they emitted. Memorial Day was always one of my favorite holidays, only behind Christmas and Halloween.
It was an exhilarating time with summer almost here and, of great importance to me, the end of the school year only days away. Some years it had already been warm enough to take a dip in Montgomery Creek and I was always excited by the traffic on US40 going to the Indy 500 which had been roaring through town for several days before the actual holiday. It’s kind of ironic that on a day set aside to honor the dead I never felt more alive.
I loved the parade to the Glen Cove Cemetery for the formal services to honor our war dead. I don’t know what group I marched with when I was very young but I can’t remember a time I wasn’t in the parade until I was out of high school. I remember how cooling the fountain at the cemetery seemed and the soothing sound of its falling water when everything got real quiet just before the firing of the salute or after the bowing of heads before the start of a prayer.
I even enjoyed the return march when I was in the HS Band despite the sweat soaked underwear beneath my wool uniform. (As I OM-PAHed up and down the square, so to speak.) There was a lightheartedness in our fatigued march back into town maybe brought about by a feeling we had done something good and our obligations were fulfilled and we could now get down to some serious summertime merriment.
cheers, Ed
Memorial Day/May memories sent by Linda Forst Linke
I remember Memorial Day marches from the town square to the cemetery in hot wool band uniforms and standing or sitting (if we could find a place) in the hot sun after we got there listening to speeches. (Most of the speakers were under a tented awning, but we weren’t! I can’t remember now if we marched back to the high school, but we probably did. I also remember when I was a kid how people used to go up to Main Street and watch all the cars driving through town on Old Route 40 on their way back from the Indy 500 Memorial Day race. Wow, what excitement, huh?
I also remember a May music festival of some kind when I was in grade school, with a May Queen and her court and each grade presenting some kind of musical number as part of the program as a program to end the year. The high school chorus and band performed after the elementary grades–there were solos as well. I definitely remember participating in this in first grade, but how long after that, I’m not sure.
It was all held in the gym, of course.
Thanks Linda…!!!
Memorial Day by Wayne Kelly
Memorial Day meant two things to me: first, placing flowers on the graves of departed family members. This was easy. Flowers from plants and bushes around our home were magically transformed into gravesite bouquets. They were placed in early morning. Then, in early afternoon, there was the “to hell and back” march with the Knightstown High School band to Glen Cove Cemetery where the American Legion held services on a grassy hillside. The KHS band uniforms were of one type: black wool! And since Memorial Day was usually a humid scorcher it meant a nearly one-mile trudge down Main and up McCullum Streets. The heat seared our feet and sweat soaked the white shirts under our uniforms. Heat waves danced across the asphalt and seemed to keep cadence with the beat of my snare drum. Military style billed hats did little to keep the mid-day sun from washing over our faces, but assured our heads were bathed in perspiration! Following the ordeal, exhausted band members were rewarded with “punch and cookies” served at the town square by (I believe) band mothers.
Thanks Wayne..!!
Independence Day/4th of July
by Wayne Kelly
My brother and I looked forward to the Fourth of July. The family usually went to Memorial Park in New Castle or the Knightstown Soldiers and Sailor’s Children’s Home for a fireworks show. If we were lucky enough to find a few fire crackers we and other youngsters would set them off. It was common to hear rockets whistling into the night sky and cherry bombs “blasting” all over town.
Thanks Wayne..!!
I haven’t a single Memorial Day or 4th of July picture to put here. If anyone has any please let me know.
Thanks, Ed
