Labor of Love: 138th Cooper Picnic

Today we did what we have done for Labor Day...well, all of my life?  I wonder if it really has been 32 years in a row?  Surely not, but most years of my life.  I don't know how old I was when we first went.  Surely I missed a year or so in there somewhere? Who knows?  Most of the years of my life I have gone to the Cooper Picnic on Labor Day.  This was Celie's 3rd year.  She made her Cooper Grove debut about 7 days after she was born; it was our first outing as a family. This year was the 138th annual Cooper Picnic.  My family's involvement in these festivities has spanned decades and it is a tradition that is close to my heart and will hopefully continue.

When I was younger Labor Day sometimes started the day before the picnic.  My dad is an electrician, and often fixed things or helped out as they were preparing for the event.  I remember going with him when he fixed the soft serve ice cream machine.  I thought it was so neat, I got to see how it was made.  My family also helped out and we were expected to for many years once we were older.  My grandmother worked in the kitchen when we were younger and we would run into the old dining hall kitchen to see her.  "I love you!" she'd tell us every time.  We would visit a minute or two, watching as she did the dishes.  It was also in this hall where my parents had the dinner part of their wedding reception.

The Cooper Picnic has games and small rides, like the unforgettable hay rides, but I can even remember when they used to have a ferris wheel and there were ticket booths.  They have the traditional bbq chicken dinner but also have a stand with burgers and such.  Funnel cakes, blue berry milk shakes, birch beer!  A few of my favorite things. The games and flea market are even better.  I can't even say how many gold fish we've won and free goods we have acquired.  My pap spun the chuck-o'-luck wheel for well over twenty five years!  I can still hear his voice declaring, "An ace, a deuce, and a trey!"  My grandmother worked at the Chinese auction when we were older, this was actually the last place that I saw her alive.  We stood in the spot where I last spoke to her on this Labor Day as we talked to a friend and watched his dad's band perform.  I forgot to mention the live music they have every year.  It's a good time.  Plus, you never know who you are going to run into at the Cooper Picnic, family, friend, or foe!

The grove is haunted by the spectres of my youth but I am sure more than that clings to this place.  I used to attend catechism classes every Wednesday in the main building that has long been torn down and replaced by a new one.  We used to ride the merry-go-round until we were sick!  They used to have the yearly 'Sleigh Full of Gifts' dinner here where we saw Santa.  I remember coming to Karate events here that my dad was in when I was a kid.  What else happened here, beyond my life?  To think, what was this grove like 138 years ago when the residents of Cooper Settlement started this community tradition?  What did these grounds look like?  The grove itself must have been so different; these trees, while impressive, were clearly not here 138 years ago.

As my daughter ran wildly evading my husband's attempts to control her, I saw myself running around the Cooper Grove as a kid, barefoot and wild, lost in tradition.  Living in the holiday.  Times have changed, the grove has clearly changed, the food has changed, the games have changed....the people have changed.  Many things about this event have changed over the years...but the tradition continues. 

Towers of Terror: Falling Bodies Over Coconut Cream

Remembering is important, especially for traumatic events.  While we strive to get over the event we also want to honor it by remembering it for all time.  9/11 was a very traumatic event in American history so it only makes sense that Americans should want to “remember” it.  Why must we remember 9/11 through the eyes of Fox news?  I was trying to enjoy some pie and coffee tonight at the truck stop and I was inundated with TV footage from the past.  I understand the REMEMBER mindset of Americans, but bodies dropping from buildings while I’m working on some coconut cream is really unnecessary! 

Where were you that fateful day?  I’m sure you have heard that.  I was sitting in an Integrative Art class taught by multiple professors in the theater at college. My one teacher kept coming in and out because he was watching it on the television screen that was in the hallway.  I think they may have even let us go early and I remember some of us gathering in the hall way in front of the tv and looking up in a mix of horror and disbelief.  I returned to my off campus house and informed my boyfriend and his cousin who was spending the week with us that we were being attacked!  They had seen and we continued watching about it together all day in between my classes. 

9/11 is a hell of a tale.  There are still even some discrepancies about it to this day, depending on who you are.  It can be a touchy subject.  A lot of people lost their lives, their loved ones, their security.  Tonight when I caught footage of the “REMEMBER” propaganda on TV (I basically otherwise try to steer clear of the news), I wondered what those people felt about “reliving” this event now.  I jokingly told my friend that people with Alzheimer’s could possibly think it was happening for the first time.  Ignorant citizens would be living it all over again!  Mass panic could ensue, War of the Worlds style!  Okay, probably not, but it was a muse. 

It may just be something to blog about, but it also brought tears to my eyes having to sit through that again.  I watched a body plummet to the earth from a massive building, like a rag doll, limbs flapping almost ridiculously, over coffee and a slice of coconut cream pie.  Media.  I can’t believe it.  And it was Fox news of all sources.  I wondered why it seemed that they were focusing so much on the terrifying side of the event.  Not that there is really a pleasant side to this, but there were a lot of positive ceremonies for the victims and their families, there was a decent humanist patriotic movement that ensued.  There were certainly more positive things to focus on!

11 years later and that’s all it was to Fox news.  It’s still bodies falling from buildings.  Why?  Why do they have to show the falling bodies?  Not even just a little clip, but a haunting long drop where the body really has some time to be played around with by the air.  Who was that?  Specifically?  Do they know?  That’s a person, God dammit!  Act like it, FOX NEWS!  Let’s remember how 9/11 made us remember how we can come together for each other in times of need, for help or support.  Remember the victims with a photo or something, but not a poor person free falling to their death because they are so terrified by what was happening that was the only logical option in their mind.  THAT is terrorism.   

It has been 11 years and we still can’t get those images out of our heads, and I doubt that we ever will. Lucky for us, we don't have to try to forget; Fox News will always be willing to remind us of that moment, that plummet, that free fall drop that changed our American lives forever.

I Have Forgotten Infinitesimally More Than I Can Recollect

What is your earliest memory?   

(NaBloPoMo January 9, 2012)

My husband is always telling me during stories in which I am recollecting my childhood how weird it is that I can remember so much.  He has one memory of being in a diaper under a Christmas tree and I think that is pretty far back!  That is one of the only early memories he apparently has, though, and I think that’s probably why he thinks that it is weird that I remember so much - maybe not the entire way back to the birth canal, but I sure can remember a lot of things from my early childhood.  The perspective is important. 

The majority of things I can remember from early childhood are from around the age of 2 to 4.  I think this is why I have been so serious about trying to get myself “together” before Celie starts really remembering things, even though the way that I am now surely is affecting the framework of her mind.  The thing is there really just is no telling how far someone will remember back when they are “grown”.  It’s all up to their mind.  In all likelihood Celie is going to remember some or potentially a lot of the occurrences that are happening now in our lives.  It’s already insane to me to think of/see the fruits of things that she is obviously sucking up like a sponge as it is.  The early baby stage has been the last time in my life I was be able to do a lot of things, but one of them was to flavorfully use and enjoy the fabulous “f” word in my vocabulary, amongst others I will miss, unless I am blogging or in partaking company (which is an endeavor of motherhood all its own and I will surely one day blog about it.)

Anyway, I digress – the earliest memory I actually have from my life is of me in a sleeper of sorts in a crib in the house where my mother grew up on 9^th Street in Philipsburg.  It’s really an image mostly, more than a living memory, and the perspective of it is odd as well.  Given, the older I get the foggier this “memory” gets, but I do remember being bathed in the sunlight from the windows behind me that the crib (or playpen?) that I was standing in was in front of.  I think that my sleeper was yellow, green, or both.  I more than likely was still in diapers.  There was nothing really noteworthy happening in this memory; it was just of me standing up and holding onto the side of the crib.  I maybe was between 9 and 18 months old, though I can’t really be certain. 

The weirdest thing about this memory is the perspective.  I see this memory in my head as if I were in front of myself.  I see “baby Missie” in front of me; I am not looking out at the world from baby Missie’s eyes, I am the world peering at baby Missie.  It’s as if I am witnessing or watching myself.  I have other memories of being young but I don’t necessarily remember them having the outer perspective like this one.  I have a lot of memories of the house on 9^th Street and they weren’t the same as this one. 

This was my first memory.   My memory started where all of my mother’s memories surely started; where my grandmother’s surely started, as she was also raised in that house.  Memory is an interesting and weird thing, though.  We’re not entirely sure how it works or why we can remember some things and not others.  Our brain just seems to make a choice.  But add in the fact that we can have implanted memories as well as false memories, it gets pretty wild.  So what do I remember?  “I REMEMBER EVERY THING!” (Meatloaf reference)  No really.  Not even close.  But I do remember a whole hell of a lot.