Happy 5th of July

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I hope you had a pleasant Independence Day. We started our celebrations on Sunday at the Independence Day celebration in tiny Lancaster, Tennessee. Though their population in the last census was only 363, they certainly know how to put on an Independence Day celebration. I’ve “carried you” (as we say in the South) to the parade before in previous early Julys. I would like to do so again, but first I’d like to tell you the history of the Independence Day celebrations in Lancaster.

Their website tells that: “Many good and important things in the history of this world started around a table with a few close friends discussing important issues.” Below that statement is an illustration of the five members of the committee chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. The committee is sitting around a table. The group included three famous colonial leaders, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, plus two not-as-famous leaders, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston.

The Lancaster celebration began when several friends sat around a kitchen table thinking about how they could increase community interest in the founding of the United States. They decided to have a parade and music and to serve homemade ice cream and other goodies. This year’s celebration was number fourteen.

Here are some highlights:

The Tennessee Highway Patrol honor guard carried the colors.

The National Guard Band from Nashville marched by.

You can’t have a parade in a small town around here without at least one fire truck.

We met longhunters.

We saw re-enactors.

Our grandchildren got balloons and flags. Parade participants threw them a passel of candy.

We even saw Uncle Sam.

This “float” had a message: “Our lives. Our fortunes. Our Sacred Honor.”

Vehicle after vehicle advertised their favorite candidate.

Praise God we get to choose.

After the parade, we walked from the front yard of a Lancaster resident, where we had watched the parade, to a field behind and beside the local Methodist Church. A generous farmer allows the celebration and the parking to take place in one of his fields.

We gathered in front of the portable grandstand to pray, to honor the colors, and to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. We watched in wonder as our grandsons pointed out one helium-filled balloon after another rising in the sky over the crowd.

We ate hamburgers. Most of us ate homemade ice cream (mine was Butterfinger®). Yum. We listened to a bluegrass band and to the variety of music the Nashville National Guard band played.

Suddenly the fireworks began . . .

. . . as the National Guard band played on, song after song. It was thrilling.

Late yesterday afternoon, Ray, Mother, and I drove a short distance to the home of some friends, who live across the river from us. We gathered with all of their sons, daughters-in-laws, and grandchildren; with our daughter, Mary Evelyn, and her husband and children; and with the entire family of our Notgrass History team member Josh; and a couple of friends. The gathering included eight homeschool graduates, one homeschooled child, and several young future homeschoolers.

We shared a traditional potluck 4th of July menu of burgers and hotdogs and potato salad and baked beans and watermelon and desserts. After supper, I sat on our friends’ front porch between two of our grandchildren to watch most of the young adults have a “blast” (pun sort of intended) as they shot off a long and impressive fireworks show.

When I first sat down, a handful of stars shown above the fireworks. By the time it was over, God had created a beautiful display of His own “fireworks” high above theirs. It was beautiful.

When Ray, Mother, and I got home, the sky above us was magnificent. We live in a valley, completely encircled by hills. It is like our own personal planetarium, except so much better, because it is real.

What blessings. Yesterday morning I listened to more of Going Home to Glory, David Eisenhower’s book about his grandfather President Eisenhower. I was in a section which describes the terrible race riots of the mid-1960s. That time was very discouraging to the aging former president who had led Allied Forces to victory in World War II and then led America through Cold War trials during the 1950s. It seemed then that the United States was falling apart. It didn’t.

Decades after that scary time in American history, Tennesseans gathered in Lancaster, Tennessee and homeschooling families gathered at our friends’ home across the river to celebrate Independence Day. A lot of people must have been praying. That is something all of us can do — and something we must do.

First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers,
petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,
for kings and all who are in authority,
so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
1 Timothy 2:1-2

 

 

 

 

 

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