I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy!

Today is July 3rd and the 59th birthday of my cousin, Jeff Robinson.  I've got more than 30 first cousins and his is the only one I usually remember.   That's because his mom, my Aunt Jo, started having parties for him when he was about 3 and always invited all the cousins.  He was 6 years younger than me but his brother was closer to my age and as cousins go he and I were probably closer during childhood than any of the other cousins.  Being the oldest cousin on that side of the family had a certain amount of "cousin prestige", but on the other hand there were a lot of younger kids and thus fewer that I wanted to play with.     The parties were memorable.  Weather permitting we always had a cookout and it was always hot dogs and then she usually took us to the pool at Columbian Park in Lafayette.  What a great pool that was.  His birthday was sort of the opening act of our Independence Day celebrations, at least for us kids.  Happy Birthday Jeff.  

Since my dad and his brothers farmed together they didn't necessarily get a "day off".  There are not really any "holidays" on the farm. The work gets done when it needs to be done, regardless of the day.    However I do remember the first time and place I ever saw fireworks on the 4th of July and that was in the front pasture in front of my grandparent's home.   Uncle Kean had been somewhere out of state and brought a carload of big rockets back home.  In those days fireworks were not legal to be sold in Indiana but you could get them in Tennessee and Missouri and possibly some other nearby states.

A bunch of us cousins were set down on blankets in the front yard and waited anxiously for the show to begin and of course we were forbidden to leave the yard, or even get too close to the fence that divided the yard and front pasture.  I've seen lots of fireworks shows since then, and most of them were much more elaborate and consisted of many more shells, but I don't suppose any matched the anticipation and excitement of those 4th's in my grandparent's front yard. It was dark enough to set off the fireworks when the lightning bugs could be seen.   I don't remember how many years we had those shows...I don't think it was very many.   We lived about 12 miles north of Lafayette, the nearest town that always had big fireworks displays.  Monticello and Wolcott also have a long history of fireworks shows but we couldn't see them from our house...but the ones in Lafayette we could see from our house.  Not well, and we often climbed up on the barn roof for a better view, but we could see the larger bursts.  Sometimes dad loaded us all in the car and drove somewhere where we could get a better view...not close, but better than from 12 miles away.

The most memorable fireworks show I've seen as an adult was the one we took our three kids to on the Mall in Washington DC.  We sat on the grass not far from the Washington Monument which put us pretty close to the action, although we were too far from any of the music venues to enjoy that part of the program. It's hard to forget the experience, especially the experience of exiting the Mall with about a million other people after the show.

Here in Lafayette we have a good fireworks show at least a couple of times a year.  On the 4th, and usually at least one of the downtown festivals ends with fireworks.  My most enjoyable local shows have always been the Lafayette Symphony program when they held the 4th of July concert on Slater Hill at Purdue.  Their final number was always the 1812 Overture featuring real canon fire and ended with the Fireworks.  That one always made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

 

I've got dibs on Flag Day

June 14th is Flag Day and has now come and gone.     One of our lesser known "holidays".  Probably lesser known because no one gets a long weekend, but it's one that has always been special for me.  Originally it was a "holiday" in our family because it was my Grandpa Robinson's birthday.  Clarence G. Robinson was born June 14, 1895 and as I was growing up it was often the day of a big family gathering and cook-out.   My father had 5 siblings so those were usually pretty big affairs by the time you added all the spouses and the twenty-five grandchildren....then we started getting spouses of grandchildren attending....and before Clarence died in 1981 there were several great grandchildren in the mix.   Sometimes some of grandpa's sisters attended too.  Big shaded lawns out in the country, lots of food, home made ice cream, and of course, fresh picked strawberries would be just coming into season. Remember when our fruits and vegetables were always "seasonal"?   Dad's birthday was June 6th and he always wanted fresh strawberries on his birthday too.  That was before the hard tasteless things that pass for strawberries we get today in the produce section. That brings up another question I've had for a long time...how have they managed to get strawberries to turn so bright red on the outside, while remaining white and hard on the inside?

These birthday parties were always carry-in affairs and each of my aunts usually brought what was their "specialty".  Mother's usual was a fruit salad, I think it was called Heavenly Hash.  It had several kinds of fruit, mini marshmallows, whipped cream, and she always put it in the same covered dish...an insulated aluminum dish with penguins embossed all around the side.  I think one of my daughters has that dish now.

My oldest granddaughter reminded me today that June 14th is also the birthday of the US Army and that brings me to yet another family connection I have with Flag Day and something that I think gives our family some minor "bragging rights".

On Saturday night, September 10, 1814 the British fleet sailed about 30 ships up the Patapsco river toward Baltimore.  Consisting of ships of the line, heavy frigates, and bomb vessels.  Fort McHenry stood between the fleet and the city.  Lt. Col George Armistead was the commander of the fort and a small handful of defenders.   Several units of local militia joined Armistead's men at the fort including 100 men belonging to the first Regiment of Maryland Artillery commanded by Captain John Berry.   My third great grandfather, then a resident of Baltimore, John K. Sumwalt, was a member of of that unit.

Armistead placed Berry's artillery unit along with others along the lower works facing the water and in front of them infantry units were placed to meet the enemy upon their landing.  However, the British ships remained several miles off shore.   All in all around 1000 men defended the fort. On Monday the British attempted to land troops about 10 miles south of the fort and during that day and into the following night the British commander had moved about 16 ships, including 5 bomb boats to within about 2 miles of the fort.  About sunrise on Tuesday the British commenced their bombardment of the fort. Finding the distance where their shells reached the fort they anchored and kept the Americans under an incessant and well directed bombardment.  The Americans opened their batteries and fired back but their shells all fell far short of the enemy.  The British continued to throw shells at the fort with only slight intermissions till one o'clock Wednesday morning.  At that time the British attempted a landing to the right of Fort McHenry but that was repulsed....the British discontinued the bombardment at about 7 o'clock Wednesday morning, turned their fleet around and left.  Baltimore was saved from a fate similar to the burning of Washington DC.

The British bombardment had lasted 25 hours and from 1500 to 1800 shells were thrown at the fort.  About 400 of those shells fell within the fort and a large number had exploded above the fort, raining shell fragments down on the defenders.  Four defenders were killed and 24 were wounded.

If this story sounds familiar (and it should) it is due to a Washington lawyer to had met with the British commander aboard the British ship in order to negotiate the release of a prisoner of war.  The young lawyer watched the entire event unfold and wrote a song to commemorate what he had witnessed. The young witness was, of course, Francis Scott Key and his little "poem" or song became our national anthem. Against what appeared to be overpowering odds the defenders of Baltimore refused to yield and I think in a very real way that sums up the American Spirit.

John K Sumwalt, along with his parents and all but one of his siblings left Maryland for the promise of cheap new land on the Indiana frontier about 5 years after he had helped to defend Baltimore.

I don't fly my flag all the time, but on special occasions such as Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day and Veterans day I always try to get it raised.   I actually prefer not to keep it raised every day because it seems more special by reserving it for those few days.  On Flag Day when I raise my flag I think of John K Sumwalt and others in my family who have defended that flag through our history and of course I remember by own Grandpa.    

   

Why I Was a Republican

This whole election cycle has had me thinking a lot about my own politics, trying to figure out why I ever thought I was or should be a Republican. I had to dig really deep to come to some understanding of this on a personal level.
I guess some of what I figured out applies to a lot of people. You hear so many people say they would rather die than support a (fill in the blank). They throw out the terms "liberal" or “conservative” as a negative adjective. Two perfectly good words we have reduced to gutter language. 

Supporting a party that for the most part works against your own self interest. That's the kind of thing that just doesn't (or didn't) make a lot of sense to me. I can understand someone supporting a party when the policies that it espouses would be a direct benefit ....it is the others who seem to go into the voting booth suffering from what amounts to political schizophrenia that I wonder about.

So why did I spend so many years thinking of myself as a Republican? I think if you go deep into my genealogy the answer would be Abe Lincoln. LOL, Yes, seriously, the 16th President and founding father of the present GOP is the reason. The buck stops there. Him, and the genetic predisposition of the Robinson's to hold "Tradition" in very high regard. The early GOP being the party of the victorious Union forces....and darling of the GAR, and the wavers of "the bloody shirt". Isn't it funny.....even after more than 100 years the GOP is still the waver of the "Bloody shirt" (using 911 as the excuse for a power grab, for every policy you want to create or change or dispense with).

First there was great-great-great grandpa Robinson....an Abolitionist who before the Civil war was active in the Freedom Party.   Being of some local political importance, we can assume he was or certainly would have been a Republican had he lived beyond 1866 although many of his beliefs would have been considered quite liberal at the time.  His son, great-great grandpa, was a Veteran of that bloody conflict which ended slavery, a member of the GAR and no doubt a Republican. The Robinsons of that era were big on tradition...family reunions, GAR Conventions (I think they were called encampments) and that good old fashioned religion. Great grandpa wasn't a Veteran of the Civil War but he grew up on the knees of those who were, so I'm sure he was well indoctrinated in that tradition.

Then came the Klan....defender of truth, justice, and the American (WASP) way....and (at least in Indiana) the owner of the GOP for several years, or did the GOP own the Klan? This was grandpa's era and in a lot of ways he is more the enigma than his forbears. The bloody shirt of the Civil War was greatly faded by the time he came along so more than anything I believe it was Tradition that kept him in the party. (and probably his mother, lol)

Even during the depression when the family farm was in peril and after he was able to save that land through the aid of one of FDR's alphabet programs he remained loyal to the GOP. During WWII while his son was serving in the South Pacific under commander in chief FDR he remained a GOP insider, serving multiple terms at two county positions, and as a state GOP convention delegate.

Being a Republican was "expected" in my family and I was certainly not the person to question that. I was loyal...not to Republican ideals and theories of governance...but to the family tradition. In truth I can’t say I really ever heard either my grandfather or father say why they supported the Republicans. In many ways it was the only party where I grew up. With only occasional exceptions I was to become a voter the GOP could count on for many years. It was always easier to follow tradition than to work at understanding the issues and learning how those issues affected me and my family. 

 These days the pace of life is hectic, and there is no shortage of both important and complicated issues that require a lot of time to investigate all sides and to gain any sort of understanding of the whole picture. Being an informed voter is hard and I understand why so few are. Politicians of all kinds (both the R's and the D's) count on us remaining uninformed and for that reason there are few independent sources of balanced information available.

That was, I think, how I became a Republican. I don’t think my belief system has steered to left as much as the Republicans have steered to the right over the past generation. The gap between where I stand and where the GOP stands has become too large to ignore. I would have to credit George W. Bush with creating the environment which has given me serious doubts about my prior blind allegiance to the GOP. That is fuel for another blog, another day.

I wonder how many others are like me; how many inherited their political beliefs and whether those inherited beliefs ever changed over time? It would be cool to hear from some other folks on that question.