Old Settler’s Day

     Labor Day was the saddest of all the holidays, when I was a kid.  Leading the charge of morosity was the fact that that holiday marked the end of summer, the end of freedom, the beginning of school.

     Ignore the fact that with the start of school, friends would be reunited, and we would have much more time on the sports fields with three recesses a day than we ever had during the summer.  Freedom is a state of mind.  We were unable to discover that idea as prisoners in the classroom.

     The other thing that happened on Labor Day was the Old Settler’s picnic.  As the name suggested. it was for the folks who had homesteaded in the area during the first decade of the 20^th Century.  In the 1950’s there were still a few of those left, but mostly it was for the descendants of the real settlers. 

      Our Grandfather survived until the end of the sixties.  He certainly qualified to attend the annual celebration, though I don’t remember him ever attending one.  We went to a few of them.

    In my memory, a lady named Lena Martin kept the day alive and spearheaded the event.  When she grew too old to do the job, the tradition quietly passed into history.  No one wanted the job.

      The day was filled with contests of various kinds for every age.  I remember some of the men standing at stations, shotgun at the ready, yelling “Pull!”  A blue rock, or blue rocks, if it were a double, would come flying out of a berm a few yards in front of the shooter.  “Boom!” went the shotgun. The crowd would ooh and ah if the explosion resulted in the blue rock turning into smithereens.  It was sort of an “Oh?” if a chip or two went flying from the rock.  If the blue rock fell and crashed ignominiously to earth where it broke into pieces on the hard old prairie, the crowd groaned.  The shooter had a dead miss.

      It seems the first prize for the shooter who hit the most blue rocks was a turkey, thus the name “turkey shoot”.  I may be confusing this with some other event, however.

      Another contest for men was the nail driving contest.  The contestant got a hammer, and a two-inch board with a big nail, 16 or 20 penny, started in the board.  The object was to set the nail with the least number of hammer blows.

      A couple of guys tried to set the nail with one blow.  The nail always went flying away somewhere.  The contestant was disqualified.  We tried to get Dad to enter this contest, but I don’t think he ever did.     

      There were plenty of contests for kids, sack races, three-legged races, foot races.  I probably tried some of those once or twice, but I soon gave up.  There were two Huffman kids who ran like greased lightning.  If they were entered, there was no sense for me to try.

     I did win a contest at Old Settlers’ Day once, hands down, no questions asked, and it was a source of burning embarrassment.  The picnic was held at Walks Camp Park.  There was a covered grandstand with a softball diamond in front of it.  In the center of the lower level of the grandstand was a stage even with the second row of bleacher seats where a speaker could stand and speak up to the crowd.

      For some reason, I was standing down below the stage.   I think I might have been set up.  The emcee announced the next contest.  Apparently, I didn’t hear what the contest was.  Had I heard, I would have beat feet out of there as fast as I could go.

         Before I could go, a set of great long spidery arms grabbed me, hoisted me over the side rails of the stage and deposited me smack dab in front of the crowd, God and everybody.  The crowd was laughing, applauding, cheering.  I suspect I turned the reddest of reds.

      I looked daggers at Jimmy Lundy.  I always considered him my friend.  Now, he betrayed me.  He was laughing, too.

      The contest?  Who has the most freckles?  There was no need to count spots, no need to look at the competition.  I was awarded first prize by judges, the crowd, everybody.

      I always hated those freckles.  Once I took a washcloth and scrubbed my cheeks until they were quite chapped.  I think there was some Lava soap involved, but the freckles remained.

      We had this Warner Brothers record, Porky Pig on a Safari.  “Ebeelubeelabookala!”  One of the animals he called on more than once was a leopard who was trying to rub away his spots.  I knew what the leopard knew.  On the third visit, there was no leopard.  Only spots on the ground and the washcloth.  The leopard had scrubbed himself away.

      I didn’t go that far.  Dad tried to comfort me.  He said he had two nicknames when he was a kid, “Spots” and “Goose egg.”  He pointed out he no longer had freckles; they would disappear.  No help.  How could anyone like a kid with freckles?  They were ugly!

     It would be many years later when both of my daughters were swooning over a fellow teacher’s son who had a spattering of freckles under his eyes and running across his nose.  Somebody actually liked a person who had freckles?  My own daughters?  Unbelievable!

      There was a reward that infamous Labor Day.  The first prize for the freckles contest was a shoeshine kit.  Some sixty years later, I have lost most of my freckles.  A few light ones mark my hands and arms. 

     But I still have the shoeshine kit.  It was packaged in cardboard with a cellophane window so you could see two dusting/polishing brushes, a black one, a clear one, two applicator brushes, a black one and a brown one, a shining cloth and two cans of Kiwi shoe polish, black and brown.  It all fits into a fake leather case.  The polish cans have been replaced a few times over the years.  The polishing cloth has been replaced.  The original brushes are all still there.  They still polish my leather shoes.

        Looking back, I sense the whole thing was a set up.  I never heard of a freckles contest.  I think Jimmy Lundy made it up, knowing who would win, and picking an appropriate prize.  With friends like that. . . .  Well, it was the right prize,  I guess.