Back-to-back days of special distinction

Martha Williams opens Christmas gift, mid-1960s

My late parents had an anniversary date of December 26. That was yesterday (Thursday), the day after Christmas of course. The date did not promote a high degree of festivity, considering it was right after all the Yuletide celebrating. So it was rather soft-pedaled over the years. Yes, kind of an afterthought.
We never talked about the wedding ceremony much, hardly at all really. The wedding was so small it seemed private and indeed maybe it was private. There are no photo souvenirs that show any more than a single other couple standing in with them. I heard the names of this couple over the years but we were not close to them. I can't remember their names.
Information is scant in the newspaper item. There are three sentences under a photo and I can tell you the wedding was in Brainerd, Mom's hometown. It was a company town with the railroad then.
Mom sang in the Washington High School choir in Brainerd when my father directed. I believe Dad was in Brainerd for just one academic year, then Uncle Sam intervened. Dad served in the Navy in World War II. He was a lieutenant in the Pacific Theater. This was "the good war" which was exactly the opposite of what we followed on the news when I was growing up. The soldiers looked the same in Vietnam. But the "cause" could not have been more different.
My father was skeptical of the Vietnam war. His most common comment was "that war is a bad deal." But consistent with his most temperate generation, he wasn't inclined to assert himself in a meaningful way. In other words, to write his congressman or something like that. I was a little kid who I'm sure my peers felt was more naive than most. And yet I remember all my instincts telling me that the Vietnam war was nothing but awful.
This presented a problem: in order to "vent" meaningfully against the war, you had to present yourself as a person rejecting authority. As time went on, so many young people decided it was necessary and proper to extend this attitude to a range of things. Why listen to older people hectoring us on drug use, for example? We gave ourselves a pass on numerous behaviors where our better judgment should have suggested more maturity. "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die."
Well, for many young men growing up in the 1960s, they faced the real specter of death before their time, due to war. Bob Hope presented his annual TV Christmas special from Vietnam over several years. A check through the online world shows that these specials had an ignoble end. Indeed they just ended. No more Mr. Hope sauntering out onstage with his golf club, glibly going through his vapid lines in front of a captive assemblage of young men experiencing hell on earth. Legend tells us he once asked "what's that smell?" It was marijuana.
My generation shook off all inhibitions about marijuana of course, as the drug became a prime badge of assertiveness for us.
Marijuana was trumped up with far too dangerous an image. It has taken much time for a realistic view to set in regarding it. No one should stand in the way of its medicinal use. The recreational use is a tougher question. Would you believe I feel some defensiveness to this very day, in saying I never got a kick out of it? Was I not inhaling properly? Seeming ignorant about "weed" was a disgraceful stamp of being a "dweeb" or whatever other unflattering description you wished to offer.
I ought to stand firmly today and just say "it's not my thing, sorry."
 
As different as space aliens?
The generation gap was no myth. Could you imagine my late parents having any time for marijuana? Of course, we all have peccadilloes and who knows what kind of secretive behavior lies in the background of anyone. I once had a psych professor (at St. Cloud State) who said with emphasis: "Each generation thinks it's the first to discover sex." I can't imagine my parents ever discovering sex. But they must have. They sure didn't let on about that with me.
I grew up with the subject of sex being the most forbidden thing in the world. Marijuana use? Even if it were to be broached with them, they would find the subject silly and irrelevant, hardly worth the trouble to even condemn. They were focused on having their life's needs met, as they had grown up in the Depression.
My father spent most of the war assigned with a crew to guard a merchant ship, a tanker in the Pacific, according to what I recall him telling me. Toward the end of the war he served on the USS Appalachian. We were invited to crew reunions through the years but did not attend. He received a memento one year, an ashtray - now there's a dated memento - inscribed "USS Appalachian."
I can see it on our living room mantle as I write this.
Dad was never one to be focused much on war memories. If I could go back in time, I'd encourage him to put aside his pastimes of hunting and fishing and get involved with the local VFW and American Legion. He was close personally with many of those people anyway.

Dad (right) w/ Brainerd friend Owen Foss

I never asked how exactly my parents began their relationship. Mom was a 1942 high school graduate in Brainerd. They were married in 1949, not long after my grandmother Carrie, Dad's mom, passed away. She was only 63 years old. Her cause of death was given as a stroke. But I always heard reserved comments about some sort of household mishap, a fall. She would have been young to be victim to such an incident.
She and her husband Martin did yeoman's work raising their family of five sons. Dad was the youngest. He graduated from Glenwood High School in 1934. This was after Martin passed away due to cancer. Martin was a plasterer and perhaps he came into contact with substances through the years that led to his demise.
 
Our family plot here in Morris
The date of my parents' wedding is inscribed on our family monument at Summit Cemetery. It's a black bench monument in the new portion of the cemetery. Please stop by, take a look and by all means "sit a spell." I figured we ought to make it useful in some way.
It may be nice but I strongly question the future of the traditional cemetery. I can't help but think this institution ought to be phased out in an age where we can create such dynamic online memorials for people. Many of us stroll through the cemetery on Memorial Day weekend. That is the big time of year for such places, American flags adorning so many sites. What I find discouraging is to walk through the old portions of the cemetery: names of people once very important in the community, but whose light has dimmed.
Worse yet is the bad erosion on many of the older stones, so bad you can't read them in some places.
Frankly my opinion is that we don't need cemeteries anymore. I found out belatedly that I could have had Dad buried at sea because he was in the Navy. I don't know what if any cost that would have been entailed.
We were the type of family that never wished to acknowledge the subject of death, not even for our dogs. OK, it was taboo. I now realize more than ever that death is inevitable and one might as well prepare.
So, my parents' wedding anniversary seemed like an afterthought right after Christmas, through all the years. We spent the day after Christmas still focused on that holiday and the gifts exchanged.
 
Don't worry, Dad
I'll never forget one December after my parents had shown signs of slowing down quite a bit, my father became concerned: a light bulb seemed to go on over his head and he said: "Are we going to be celebrating Christmas?" What he meant was whether we'd celebrate Christmas in the full traditional manner, like in our heyday as a fully active family. I made a point to drive to Alexandria by myself, walk through Wal-Mart and pick up a number of items that we could share from under the Christmas tree.
So I gathered the three of us together on Christmas Eve and we went through the items, feeling joy at every single one, just like when Mom and Dad were in their prime. We were a family that was quite blessed with material things. So it was hard finding gifts with real utility. But a stroll through Wal-Mart definitely gave opportunities for decent gift selection even if some items seemed, well, superfluous.
Shop in Morris? Why show loyalty to stores here if they won't necessarily show it back? Look at Shopko.
There is an episode of TV's "Adam Ruins Everything" where the host interviews a book author who argues we're just wasting money on Christmas gifts. Well silly rabbit, it's probably true. I appreciate the guy's insights but sometimes we just have to give a pass to tradition.
I can close my eyes and conjure up the warmest memories of Christmas time in years gone by. The memories by themselves give joy today at a time when I live alone and don't celebrate much. The extent of it, really, is to use the boundless resource of music on YouTube. There are certain Christmas items I call up, such as a Chris Rea tune that I consider No. 1, and all this fills my plate nicely for the Christmas spirit. Our old Christmas CDs stay in the basement. Such a changing world.
And did you know the Monkees have a Christmas album recorded in contemporary times? You should listen to their song "What Would Santa Do?" Well, all that is now put aside until next Christmas. So until then, pray for the stability of our nation.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

Mom thought the last of our three dogs, "Sandy," could be "a little wild." But Dad and I sensed there was nothing but unconditional love. We'd look at this photo and say "when in doubt, just look at this picture."