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Friday, 19 November 2010

Small-Town Saturday Night

By Lyn Burnstine of The Lynamber Times

When I was a teenager, back in the 1940s, there were two summertime thrills. One was the town band concert each week in a little pocket park in the center of town.

The band, made up of school band members and older townsfolk, practiced in a hot upstairs hall earlier in the week but were outside under the stars in a lighted pavilion for the concert. I was always one of the youngest and kind of the “star” because I played the piccolo, often featured in Sousa marches and marching band music.

A piccolo player, even more than a flutist that I also was, can get by with murder because if you are in the right key, you can play just about any runs and trills and it sounds correct.

I did hit the right notes most of the time, but for sure in Stars and Stripes Forever, the ending song of each concert. It had been my senior solo with the school band at my graduation so that entire last summer at home, it became “my song” with the band dropping down to a whisper behind me to showcase the piccolo part.

If I didn’t already crave an audience, it developed then and there in little Villa Grove, Illinois.

The second summertime activity also took place on that short, three-block, business district of the tiny town. It was traditional for the farm families to “go to town” on Saturday nights. The handful of businesses would be open and while the adults were busy with shopping, the teenagers and kids would meet up with their friends and walk the streets.

For the older kids, it was a chance to size up the opposite sex, flirt and maybe even meet and talk together with kids from other schools in the area. The girls tended to gather in groups to giggle and whisper a lot; the boys were more apt to whistle at the girls, make comments (not as rude as today’s) and dare each other to approach the girls.

I was a late-comer to this tradition. My father was too busy and exhausted to take us due to his summer truck farming, his cowherd tending and his commute to the never-ending summer school classes in pursuit of a B.A.

He had been a country teacher and principal before the Depression with a teaching certificate from one year at a teacher’s college. He was then hired during World War II to fill the void left by male teachers gone off to war, with the caveat that he continue to work toward his degree. He reached that goal just one year before my older sister graduated from college.

I wasn’t allowed to go hang around town by myself at night so when two neighbor girls and their family invited me, I was permitted to go. I did indeed meet one boy from another school. I became friends with his twin sister and in typical teen-age girl fashion, I told her I liked him, she told him, then he said he liked me, too, and they invited me to a hay ride at their farm to celebrate their older brother going into the service.

There, Wilfred totally ignored me but his older brother, Joe, flirted with me. I always felt bad that I rejected Joe; he never made it back from Korea.

Wilfred and his sister switched to our school in September and I was almost too excited to breathe on the first day of school. By the second week, I was so sorry I had told anyone I liked him because he was weird, and I had to work with him on the newspaper.

We fought the entire two years till graduation, being in constant competition over editorships; he took over my job as editor of the newspaper because I was the editor of the senior yearbook. Of course we were each other’s assistant editor, so there we were in all the pictures, our heads bent over the publications, looking for all the world like best buds.

When we were “walking the streets” on those warm summer nights, we knew almost everyone we saw and saw almost everyone we knew. When I say small town, I am understating. It had then about 4,000 residents and now has 2500.

Last fall, when I walked our glorious Walkway Over the Hudson for the first time, I recognized it! It was small town Saturday night.

People on the walkway smile at each other, say hello, stop and talk to folks they know and to strangers. I never feel alone when I am there by myself. They offer to take your picture if you are alone and holding a camera. It’s a harmonious blend of ages, sizes, races, ethnicities, people, dogs and vehicles.

I’ve seen and enjoyed every breed of dog there is; in fact, I was adopted by two cute little Yorkies last time.

I’ve seen every kind of individual transport – trikes, strollers, scooters, wheelchairs, walkers, inline skates, electric scooters and even wagons. I’ve seen unicycles, bikes, three-wheeled adult tricycles and bicycles built for two.

I’ve seen runners pulling a kid along in a cart and a bicycle-built-for-two with a kid’s bike hitched on behind. Although it draws from a much larger base than did our midwest “Small Town Saturday Nights,” I nearly always see someone I know reminding me of those long-ago strolls on Main Street, USA.

The spirit is the same.

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