Celebrating with a memory of another July 4th long ago that I have rewritten for today.
The Taste of a Summer Plum
I stood at the sink this morning, eating a plum, its sweet juice running down my chin. And then, like in a movie where the scene shifts, I was ten years old again, in a small kitchen in Fennville, Michigan, filling a brown paper bag with plums from a bowl.
This was the little house my parents bought for their hunting trips. But in the summer, my mother and I spent weeks there, my father coming on the weekends. The house was set among buzzing cornfields and country roads. These were summers of bare feet and playing with the three children who lived on a farm across the road. It was Americana through and through. I loved every minute of it.
But, back to my brown bag as I slipped out the back screen door. A wide cornfield pressed up against our property, and like in Field of Dreams, I stepped into the rows and vanished. Before long, I had eaten every plum in the bag. My runaway adventure ended right there. I turned around, walked back through the tall stalks, and slipped quietly through the screen door. My parents never knew I’d been gone.
I don’t remember why I ran away that day, but I can still hear the buzzing, chirping, and humming of insects deep in the corn. This morning as I ate a plum that sound came back to me. There I stood barefoot in the soil with nothing but time, sun, and summer days that felt like they would last forever. Is some ways they have.
Privileged to be an American child, I join all of you who decorated your bikes for the 4th of July parades. The little American flags we waved still exist, and I have three of them arranged in a wreath hanging on the front door. We do not forget that we have been given freedom, and that people have given their lives so we can have that.
Today, those who decry America from within, will never understand as we do, the America with Friday night high school football, the band playing on the field, or Norman Rockwell’s Post Magazine covers, or America’s game, baseball.
Today we give thanks for all the unnamed examples of the greatness of living in America.
It is usually watermelon on the Fourth, but should you eat a plum, I am happy to hand you a cloth to wipe your chin.
SFH – 7-4-26
Main Street Rocky Mount 