Oh say can you see…

By Ken Welborn

Record Publisher

 

Fall is here, and with it comes the unparalled beauty found in the foliage of the mountains and foothills of western North Carolina, and all we have to do is look around us. In addition, this time of year brings the crisp, cool morning air of autumn, clearly signaling that winter is close behind.

But for me, there are other colors for which I have looked forward to each and every fall since my childhood — the bright, flashing lights of the carnival midway. These glowing ribbons of incandescence and neon are always accompanied by the electronic calliope of the merry-go-round, the Ferris wheel and other assorted rides sure to please every age from one to one hundred.

For the last thirty-odd years in Wilkes County, the carnival midway and rides have been part of the North Wilkesboro Rotary Club’s annual Wilkes Agricultural Fair. Early on, it was held at the North Wilkesboro Speedway or the VFW Park. Then, a few years ago, the club was able to purchase the property behind Cook’s in West Park Shopping Center off D Street in North Wilkesboro, giving the Wilkes Agricultural Fair a permanent home, the Worth E. Tomlinson Rotary Park.

The fair is a major fundraiser each year for the Rotary Club, but it is a lot more. While many of you know the Rotary Club has been sponsoring the event for many years, I want to tell you about a part of the fair of which you may not be aware.

For around ten years, the North Wilkesboro Rotary Club has been contacting the various schools and agencies that work with special needs children and adults to make the fair, and its rides and attractions, available to their clients. This is accomplished by having a special Wednesday morning opening of the fair just for them. The buses and vans begin arriving about 10:00 a.m., and by 10:30 a.m. Tomlinson Park is fairly teeming with activities — truly something for everyone. It does not take long for the smiles and laughter of people of all ages enjoying the rides to translate into smiles on the face of Jim Beckwith, who organizes the event for the club, and on the many Rotarians who are there to help.

This day of the fair is special every year, and this year even more so.

About ten minutes after the rides got cranked up this past Wednesday, Steve Forrest showed up with a box containing about a hundred baseball caps that had been donated by Cook’s.

Steve is the Brushy Mountain Bee Farm guy, and he really loves bees.

As a matter of fact, about the only thing he likes better than bees are kids and, on this day at the fair, he was in hog heaven. He ran back and forth with a double armload of hats, laughing and smiling and passing out hats — and love. Steve passed by me and said what I was dying to hear, “Ken, you need to be giving out some hats, too — grab’em.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

In a flash, I had hats from every conceivable team and event, and was going down the midway passing them out. It was wonderful to see the smiles on all those shiny faces as they picked out just the color they wanted. I adjusted many of the hats so they would fit, and one young girl even had me pull her ponytail through.

She was so proud.

I was prouder.

And, I was having a ball.

As I worked my way up and down the asphalt walkway with my hands full of caps, I was taken by the sheer joy of that many people happy in one place.

As lunchtime approached, the smell of hamburgers and hotdogs cooking on the grill wafted over the fairgrounds. Jeff Swofford and folks from the Brushy Mountain Smokehouse and Creamery were busy fixing lunch for over 400 people. As I continued to work the crowd with hats and hugs, I came upon a beautiful young lady named Bridgette Neill, the daughter of Ellen McDaniel. As I knelt to let her pick out a hat, she smiled and quickly pointed to a bright green one. As I put the hat on for her, she softly thanked me and then said, “I want something else.”

I was actually walking away as she spoke, but quickly turned around and told her I would help her if I could. “I want to sing The Star Spangled Banner,” she said firmly. I looked up at the young woman with Bridgette, and she nodded approvingly and said, “She has sung it many times.”

I went over to Buffalo Barfield who was about to start his program for the crowd and asked if he could help. He didn’t bat an eye, saying, “Why, that’s who we’re here for, is the children. Of course she can sing.” When I told Bridgette we had arranged for her to sing the national anthem, she positively beamed.

I did too.

Soon it was time.

With Bridgette next to him in front of the stage, Buffalo Barfield introduced her to the crowd. When he told them she was going to sing The Star Spangled Banner, everyone applauded.

Then, there was absolute silence.

With a firm, strong voice, Bridgette began. “Oh, say can you see…”

She smiled as she continued, and it seemed as though the whole world remained silent as we all listened intently to this little girl who sang with such pride and purpose. By the time Bridgette Neill had finished singing, there was not a dry eye on the place, and the applause was thunderous.

It made you a little prouder to be a Rotarian, because it truly brought home the motto, “One profits most, who serves the best.”

That’s what the fair is all about.

That’s what fun is all about.

That’s what love is all about.

Thank you, Bridgette, for the wonderful lesson.

 

Remember when . . .

Things I’ve Learned

 

I know there are a lot of us here that remember those good times. I surely do. I also remember when you ate what was given you at mealtime and would get a lecture about the poor kids in China not having food if you didn't. I always wondered how on earth to get that food to them before it got cold. I would not have dared to say that, I just thought it. No mom made a special meal for anyone unless you were sick and then it was chicken noodle soup.

Moms used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread Mayo on the same cutting-board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. Moms used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND we used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

Remember going to the grocery store with mom? Throwing a fit was not an option because she would have ended it really quickly. Climb up the shelves? The grocery man took care of that kind of thing. My little seater would have been red for a week if I had tried any of that mess. Moms all had eyes in back of their heads. I am still sure of that. They have a baby and, bingo, those eyes appear!

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house because if we did, we got our butt spanked (physical abuse here too). . .and then we got it again when we got home. “How could you do that to your Mother? “What is that other Mother saying about your mom now?” “Soon it will be all over town and I will never hold my head up again.” Mom holding her head up was of paramount importance as I remember it now.

Mom invited the door-to-door salesman inside for coffee. She looked at his brushes and spices and learned all the latest news from the last town he was in. Anyone with a “no solicitors” sign meant that someone in that house was sick. Kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks. (Remember why Tonka trucks were made tough. . .it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room.) Dad drove a car with leaded gas and if he paid more that $.23 a gallon he was being ripped off and would just keep driving until a station met his price. Everyone always had a clean windshield; the man at the station made sure of that one.

Remember "the look" Dad could give you? He never had to say a word. Heaven forbid he explained to you what you were doing wrong — you already knew what it was and were not about to keep on with it. The day before he died, my dad looked at me just that way and I melted into a puddle and started babbling, “Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir." I was 48 years old. Speaking of Dad. . .remember his hat? He always had a hat on. It was not a ball cap. Those were for ballplayers. My dad traded off a new car because he could not wear his hat while driving.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself, and before my parents would say how proud they were of me. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations. We used imagination, not toys. Do you not recall using your hand to make a gun and getting into a fight over who shot first and who was dead? Somehow we got through all that without having to actually shoot someone. One thing I was sure of. . .never, ever tell Mom you were bored. She always had work for you to do. You either lay on the grass, watched the birds and made up stories from cloud shapes or you terrorized the little brothers or sisters and made them cry. They are great people now. They remember what you did and bring it up occasionally, but they did not feel compelled to have their little psyches messed up.

We must have been in comas or something to not recognize any of the dangers that could have befallen us as we trekked off each day, about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, and built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger. We played “King of the Hill” on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat and no armed guard overseeing it. Oh yeah. . .and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! Imagine how deprived I feel now.

How sick were my parents! Of course, my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single family I knew back then was told they were dysfunctional. How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger-management classes? But if we had, and felt the spirit move us to tell anything and everything going on at our house, Heaven help us for “airing dirty linen” in public.

We loved our parents and somehow knew discipline was necessary for our own good. We did not take it as something we should resent.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring). The term “cell phone” would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school P.A. system. Remember the kid who had to lead the pledge every day? Boy, did he get razzed all day? As I remember his little psyche was not harmed and he did not shoot up the school because of it. He went on to be governor of the state.

We all took Gym, not P.E., and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's, instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built-in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. Any complaints of pain were met with icy stares and the admonition that, if you rubbed it out, it would be okay. Flunking Gym was not an option...even for stupid kids! (I guess P.E. must be much harder than Gym.) Like flunking Home Economics or Shop was not an option. If you did, you stayed back a year and the other kids did not make that easy on you. If I had told my folks that a teacher did not like me, they would have said, “I can sure see why.” I was 30 years old before I found out that once in a great while a teacher makes a mistake. That was not part of my education.

How much better off would we be today if we had only known we could have sued the school system? Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. My little psyche was only hurt when I had to walk all those miles home instead of riding the school bus because I'd missed it. Was my Mom about to come after me if missed the bus? I would have done most anything rather than ask her to find out.

I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14-year-olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway), but they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything. Our nurse's first step was to call the mother and explain that she thought we had lessonitis and should be yelled at before being sent back to class. She would explain there was a test coming up in the next class and that you had to take it, as there was no make-up test with that teacher. Mom would say “okay” and back to class you would go, with your hall pass clutched to your chest, hoping you did not cry in front of anyone and be embarrassed.

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we survive?

Makes you want to cry that, contrary to popular belief, we became adults, started telling our kids that the world was ending because of the likes of them and shaking our heads that they were such little trolls.

Have a great one; see you next week, I certainly hope. Caseyannie