Following is a description of how I spent the bicentennial in 1976 from my book An Iowa Life: A Memoir. I was on military leave, in between Officer Candidate School and Infantry Officer Basic Course. This year is the 250th birthday of America. I’m not feeling celebratory and wish I could go back to those days when I slept on mother’s front porch through the holiday, away from neighborhood noise.
I stayed on at Fort Benning to take the Infantry Officer Basic Course and attend jump school. After OCS, life was less stressful as I prepared for my assignment in Germany.
I felt the beginnings of transformational change from being an observer of society to a participant.
I see myself more as a player in the show than as an observer and critic. I, too, am a pilgrim traveling on the road to Canterbury with the others. I am beginning to chip the yellow stains from my teeth in preparation for a big smile in greeting the people and animals I see. Life is alive again, and my spirit is tuned into the wavelength of the people again. (Personal Journal, Fort Benning, Georgia, June 6, 1976).
I spent the Bicentennial Independence Day at home in Davenport,
If you stop by my mother’s house you still may see the red, white, and blue décor where I slept this week during my leave time.
After running around the Assumption track a few times, I returned, bathed, and lay down on our ancestral glider. The glider where girls I have crooned and plots have made. I tried to read N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize winner but nodded as I have so often done, waking with an urge to set ink to paper about an event from the past.
So, with Grandma sleeping inside and green maple leaves surrounding me, I will recount the vision I have just had.
Several years ago, while we were still in school, Tim Hawks invited me up to his family farm house near Belleview. Some friends of his from Georgetown were visiting and I brought my guitar along to make a little music. In DeWitt, I believe, we stopped and bought a kite to fly once we got out to the farm. When we arrived, we were greeted by the cat who had the house to himself for quite a while and was anxious to make our acquaintance. In we go and carry whatever it was we brought with us inside and got the heater going to provide a more comfortable evening for us. After this and a slight tour, we decided to go outside and fly the kites which we managed with little difficulty: one regular and one box kite. For some reason we decided to leave the kites out and reel them in in the morning before we left. As it got dark, we retired to the inside where we settled down making a little music together, Timothy disappearing to the upstairs after a while with my guitar to make some music on his own. When we woke the next day, we discovered several inches of snow on the ground and that our kites had come down. After a breakfast of pancakes, we policed up the kites and made our way back the treacherous road to the highway, our adventure on the farm complete. (Personal Journal, Davenport, Iowa, July 5, 1976).
When I returned to Fort Benning, I found spare time to write in my journal.
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