Fourth of July

 

We met at noon under the towering elms

 where the remains of an old logging camp could still be seen,

 the foundation beams of kitchen and bunk houses now grass and moss covered,

sat beside the barely meandering waters of Apple River as it wound its way

 from east to west through the farm.

For a short time each year on July 4^th,

that logging camp now become cow pasture

served as a picnic park.

August and Elsie Becker, uncle and aunt, from the farm next door arrived

 with their two foster children, Marlene and Gary Nelson,

bearing towel covered boxes with their  contribution

to the picnic. 

Dad pulled a trailer behind the Allis Chalmers B

bumping over not quite buried rocks left

behind by the last glacier ten thousand years before

there was a United States that celebrated Independence

from another country on another continent that did not exist

when glaciers bulldozed their way through the land

 practicing their own unwritten declaration of  independence

of all that might impede their striving for freedom.

We arrived and mom and Elsie spread a covering over the grass

 to serve as a table.

Laurin and I and Wayne joined the Jansen-Becker-Nelson group.

We ate, sat on the logging camp foundations, and then

played ball in the elm shade or explored the river or

looked for artifacts careful not to step in any artifact left behind

by one of the milk cows.

  All too soon we packed up and the Allis bumped its way

over glacier strewn rocks back to the farm buildings,

there was hay to be made, cut, raked or hauled

to the barn where the hayfork descended on its

pulleys from the haymow to be pulled hay-laden back

into the mow with a thick rope attached to the drawbar of the Allis.

In the evening we may go to Amery to watch the fireworks

after the cows were milked.

Now the elms are gone as is any remnant of the logging camp

As is August and Elsie and mom and dad and Gary too.

My sermon text for tomorrow is Isaiah 61:9,

“They are a people whom the Lord has blessed.”

So we were and so we are.  Blessed as a land and blessed

in Christ.  Give thanks to the Lord for the gift of our good and

his Grace.