A Deep River Year
July 23,  2014

Last weekend was Deep River's annual "Ancient Muster," the largest one-day gathering of fife and drum corps in the world.  It's been happening annually here on a July Saturday since 1953, and occasionally before that since 1879.  The boom and rattle of drums and the high-pitched music of fifes fills the air all weekend as travelling bands from as far away as Switzerland gather in friendly competition and an all-night jam session, called a "tattoo," on the local ball field.  Some residents are not too keen on listening to fife and drum music for a whole weekend, but most of us at least drag our lawn chairs down to Main Street for the Saturday parade.

A parade stirs childlike excitement in the stodgiest of souls.    And our parade has the usual side attractions.   There are balloon vendors and hot dog peddlers, and you can buy T-shirts and hats and badges to prove that you've been to beautiful downtown Deep River.   A portable barbecue smoker set up business in the parking lot behind the hardware store, and a host of curious children were gleefully grossed out to see the decapitated hog's head mounted on the sign over the stand.  But then the moment came for which everyone waited:   the flashing lights of the police escort, the snapping flags in the morning breeze, and the local drum corps stepping into view with a rousing version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

There are marchers dressed as sailors and pirates, some in bright formal uniforms with brass buttons and tricorn hats.   Kids on bicycles ride in and out of the spaces between the bands, smiling at the joy of being in the parade, too.  Muskets fire into the sky; we jump in our seats, laughing with the surprise of it.   Perhaps we're laughing with the joy that we can still be surprised, a sure sign of life.   In the musical "Hello, Dolly," the main character, Dolly Levi, a widow, realizes that it's time to she’s been living too long with sadness and solitude.   "Before the parade passes by," she sings, "I've gotta get some life back into my life."     "I wanna feel my heart coming alive again," she belts out with gusto.   On Saturday, we got a little taste of the parade that's waiting for all of us.

Comes the Parade

We were young once
and the band was far down the street
around a corner, invisible,
and we waited, watched,. listened
for the distant thunder,
the flutter of trumpets,
the hopeful throaty cheer from those
who could already see.
At last it came,
shaking the earth,
gleaming with reflected light
and carrying the world along
to the beat of an endless march,
then stepped along, away,
a passing dream,
the memory of a shining splendor
that once we saw.
We are older now,
still peering into the distance,
standing on tiptoe and looking for the band
to come again and raise a pulse in us.
But I hope for this:
that we may waken to a breathless morning
and see a child down the street
glimpse something luminous in us
bright as a sweet trumpet's song,
maybe even hear the tap of drums
which is the march beat of our life,
and  believe that there is
always a parade
and we are in it.

--Timothy Haut, July 23.  2014

A Deep River Year
July 16,  2014

“Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day!”  Children have been singing that old chant for hundreds of years, especially on summer days when they wanted to  be outside playing.  Most of us still wish for sunny days, and these are often the setting for the happiest days of our lives.   But rain, too, is good and necessary.   The peppers in our garden have been drooping and even the morning glories climbing the fence have been limp as they wait for rain after a long stretch of dry weather.  By this time in July, too, the grass in a hundred lawns is looking brown and thirsty.  So it is as if the world was uttering a long, sweet, “Aaaah!” when yesterday it rained at last. 

In the book The Outermost House, Henry Beston’s classic description of a year spent in a spare cabin amid the sand dunes of Cape Cod, he notes that there are “three great elemental sounds in nature”:  the sound of rain, the sound of wind in the trees, and the sound of the ocean on the beach.     There is something wondrous about the sound of approaching rain:  the whisper in the treetops on a nearby hill, the swish of car tires passing on the street, the blip of drops hitting the water of the creek or the pond around the corner.   Last night we slept to the patter of rain against the window glass, a rhythmic, sweet sound that reminds us of a primal truth:  that rain is life.   We, earth creatures, are mostly water.   And we live on the only planet yet discovered in a vast and lonely universe that is wet.

Sometimes the wetness is annoying.   As a matter of fact, I was a block away from home walking our dogs when the rains began.   It came as sheets of heavy, soaking rain, and by the time we got home, we were wet and soaked, too.   The dogs had a good shake in the kitchen, and I changed into dry clothes.     But this morning, in shorts and bare feet, I resisted the temptation to run for cover.   I felt the wet grass between my toes, savored the cool leaves brushing against my legs and splattering my shirt and pants, laughed at the rivulets running down my face.     I was alive with summer rain.

Summer Rain

I am wet with life,
Slippery as morning.
I walk through a green world
Where the most precious of gifts
Falls from the sky.
The earth drinks deeply
Of such goodness
As something like a song
Ripples through the tall trees.
We wish the summer rain away,
Seek shelter, wait for sun.
When we could walk uncovered,
Dripping with joy
And drenched with glory.
O sweet rain,
Moisten the dry earth.
Soften my thirsty heart.
Be gentle!   Be life!

--Timothy Haut, July 16,  2014

A Deep River Year
July 9,  2014

There we were, looking down on that wonderful emerald green field in the midst of the concrete city.   It was Fenway Park in Boston, a mystical place where a summer night means baseball.   We were up above third base, in seats which were a gift from my sons who had heard that the Chicago Cubs would be coming  to New England for a rare inter-league game between these two ill-fated teams.   I grew up rooting for the Cubs, as had my father, believing that someday they might have a winning team.   It has not happened yet.   In fact, it has been 106 years since the Cubs won the World Series.  But on this night in July the Cubs' pitcher was throwing a no-hitter into the eighth inning.  We, these men tied together by blood and story, joined in the chants and cheers and watched night fall over the great green wall in left field where so much Boston magic has taken place.  

I thought of my father-in-law, who grew up cheering for these Red Sox, and especially for his idol, the great Ted Williams.  In some sense, my father-in-law was a boy who never grew up.   He dreamed of playing baseball forever, and once he had a chance.  He was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, and he made his way up through the minor leagues for a while.  He was a star for the Sheboygan Indians and remembers playing for the Greenwood (Mississippi) Dodgers, where in the heat of the Gulf summer they played in short pants as the girls in the grandstand hooted.     Once, in spring training, he caught a fly ball that Willie Mays hit to the wall in center field.  But because of an injury, he never made it to the Big Leagues.    Still, he got farther than most of us who dream of such things.  My father-in-law died last night, still reliving those memories and those dreams.

A Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale University who was later the Commissioner of Baseball, once said  that baseball "tells us that much as you travel and far as you go, out to the green frontier, the purpose is to get back home, back to where the others are."   My wife's dad  has been leading off third base most of his life.   Maybe at last he's sliding into home.   On that night last week in Boston, when the Cubs won 2-0, there was almost a no-hitter.   But the real glory of the game was up in the stands, on the third base side, where a father and his sons were together, ball caps on our heads, screaming our lungs out, remembering where home was.

A Baseball Dream

We played catch in the back yard,
my father, tongue clenched in his teeth,
left-handed mitt on his hand,
and I, a would-be second baseman,
who lived through his stories.
Once he met an over-the-hill Babe Ruth--
the great Bambino--
barnstorming through town
for a few bucks and, mostly,
for the love of it.
Some lucky Iowa boy
could be on his team
for one night, they said,
by heaving  a baseball
over the tallest building in town.
My Dad leaned back and threw it--
heart and soul he threw it--
up, up, higher than he ever dared dream.
He recalls that the ball nearly went over,
bounced against the highest ledge,
and fell back to earth.
I am still waiting to catch it.

--Timothy Haut, July 9,  2014

A Deep River Year
July 2,  2014

The Fourth of July is our American holiday, a pause in the midst of summer to celebrate the founding of this nation.  Roadside stands not only offer piles of watermelons and not-quite-native tomatoes to provide for family picnics, but also boxes of sparklers,  bottle rockets, cherry bombs, fountains and firecrackers that are designed to make maximum amounts of noise and smoke and a few glorious explosions of light at nightfall.   As a child, my mother warned us against such things ("you could blow a finger off with one of those!"),  though at least once my father brought back a stash to our home in Iowa from a place across the border in Missouri where they were legal.   You could see the bright explosions reflected in his joyous eyes.

If we really wanted fireworks, we'd head out to a field on the edge of town and, with hundreds of other families, spread out our blankets and have a picnic.  As the sun settled on the western horizon we became restless for darkness.   Fireflies twinkled over us as the stars began to come out, one by one, and at last it was night.   We stretched out on our backs and watched spectacular displays erupt over us--great fiery chrysanthemums and waterfalls of light, booming gloriously as ashes drifted down and settled on us.   Never was a child  so happy as when the grand finale of fireworks burst and shuddered in the sky.

In these my older years, I confess, I avoid the traffic and the hungry mosquitoes at whatever local fireworks displays may tempt me.   My Fourth of July is a time to rest and to participate in quieter celebrations.   I walk in the back yard and check the sour cherry tree, hoping that the blue jays will have left enough fruit for a Fourth of July pie.   I gather the sugar snap peas in the loose tail of my shirt and sit in the shade to see if the oriole will come down to feast on the mulberry tree which we let grow by accident.   Across the street the bright orange day lilies line the street, on schedule again for their Fourth of July visitation.   They toss their heads in the breeze, like fireworks.

Fireworks

High in the deep sky
Great showers of light explode,
Fountains and blossoms
Filling the darkness.
Their boom and thunder shake the ground,
Stirring a wide-eyed child to laugh with wonder.
But somewhere another child cowers,
Face buried in a terrified mother’s arms
As she waits for silence to cover her.
There is no delight for her,
No joy of picnic and celebration
In the ancient percussion of death
Dropping from the sky.
We wish her freedom from this.
We would give her a bright summer day
Of games in grassy fields
And sweet starry nights of gentle dreams--
A world where the only explosions
Would be the flash and fire
Of orange blossoms waving
In the peaceful morning
Of a new day.

--Timothy Haut, July 2,  2014