Muskmelon a la mode

Every Fourth of July, the First Reformed Church of Hospers held its church picnic on the church grounds, and unlike going to church on Sunday mornings AND evenings, it was one event I looked forward to.

Men nailed 2x4s together and made a big church stand. The counters were made of thinner, wider slabs of wood. Melons bobbed like big balloons in stock watering tanks among big blocks of ice. Bottles of pop floated lazily by, ready to quench a thirst or make a root beer float. The ice cream was packed into coolers with reserves stashed in the church basement freezers.

The best treat at the church stand was muskmelon (better known these days as cantaloupe) and ice cream. The workers would slice one melon in half, scoop out the seeds, and lay a mound of vanilla ice cream in its hollow.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But as a kid, I lived for the picnic and that treat.

We were a thrifty people, and muskmelon and ice cream were decadent, the sort of thing you’d have once a year.

To purchase this pastel perfection, you could ask your dad for money, or you could earn your way to cool, creamy goodness by running races. There was a 50-yard dash and a sack race and a wheelbarrow race with you or your partner acting as the wheelbarrow.

Did I ever win a race? I was fleet of foot, but I think I would have remembered if I left my Sunday School friends in the dust. No matter what the finish, everyone seemed to receive at least one ticket for their efforts.

When you racked up enough tickets you went to the church stand and bought candy or, for me, muskmelon and ice cream.

Everyone from church seemed to be there. There really weren’t many places to go, except maybe the Iowa Great Lakes, but back then, people held allegiance to their families, their church, and their town, and the high turnout of people made the day that much more fun.

Even adults ran races and played picnic games. If it was a really hot day, as it often was, the water balloon toss was the most popular. Seeing your Sunday School teacher take a water balloon to the solar plexus was hilarious, we thought. Seeing a mom catch the balloon, only to have it break and soak her dress below the belt made us all think, she peed herself!

We kids thought it, but we didn’t say it. Back then, people behaved as if they were very chaste.

We were a buttoned-up people.

Instead, we’d snicker into our hands or look at each other with knowing glances.

And then it got dark, and there might be sparklers or firecrackers. No fireworks.

As I mentioned earlier, we were a thrifty people.

And then it was time to break down the church stand, store the wood in someone’s barn, and pack away all the picnic baskets into car trunks.

At home, we’d run around my parents’ empty lot with more sparklers that my parents brought home from the family hardware store. We danced and swirled and wrote our names with the jagged sparks-on-sticks.

We’d light black pellet “snakes” on the driveway and watch them unfurl. Nobody cared about the black marks they left behind on the cement. My brother or one of the neighbor boys might shoot off some bottle rockets.

We were a tame people when it came to excitement.

These are the memories of a child, boosted by her older brother’s more acute recollections, but it seemed like a happy time. Adults took a little time away from their labors. At the picnic, without their caps on, farmers’ white foreheads shone eerily against their sun-browned faces.

During church services, I usually only saw the backs of their heads and their reddened necks in the pews, but here, outside, on the church grounds, they were loose in their bodies, as though newly released from the chrysalis of work and obligation.

Slowly, the era of local, simple pleasures gave way to more prosperous economic times. Eventually the church picnics started to fizzle. People began to want to go places and possessed the means to do so. We began to move away from these roots in more than just a physical sense. We were changing. We thought about ourselves differently.

The prayers before church functions changed, too. From the formal, stentorian tones of old, lay church leaders started to pray: “We just come to you, Lord. . .” “We just thank you, Lord. . .”

Less buttoned up, maybe. More vocal in a way that made God seem like a buddy, and what about that? It was all part of a progression, of moving beyond a Sunday suit to a sport coat and finally to a leisure suit. My mom and other moms stopped wearing hats and gloves to church, too.

On this Fourth of July, I remember those celebrations in Hospers and how we felt secure in the blessings of America, where everyone who made an effort had a chance to do better. Few expected to get rich, really, but they trusted a system that would make it possible to do better than their parents.

How long ago it all seems.

Joan Zwagerman will be watching the Star-Spangled Spectacular parade. Sadly, muskmelon and ice cream no longer taste as good together.