07/10/25

7/10/2025

Memory is a tricky thing for older folks. Sometimes we can remember specific people, places, and events from decades earlier, while at the same time we can’t remember much about yesterday or even a couple of hours ago. My coffee group of very mature men belabors that failing regularly. The fact that we continue to do so drives home the point: we repeat it in our conversation several times a week.

Another function, or malfunction, of an older memory mechanism, especially for someone with a lifelong interest in history, is uncertain judgment about what times were actually like in the past. I regularly find myself, for instance, comparing contemporary life with what I recall it was like “back then.” 

These days, more and more, the exercise can be disheartening. The Iowa I grew up in and in which I started my career, seen through my wayback spectacles, seems as if it was more serene, peaceful, and content than what we’re experiencing today. The state’s approach to governance feels coarser now than what I remember it to be, and I sometimes wonder if that’s an accurate reflection of people’s attitudes toward one another these days.

Then along comes a boost.

Kathy and I spent last Thursday night and Friday morning—Fourth of July eve and day—in Sioux City with my sister and brother-in-law Deb and Randy Burnight. I wanted to watch the Sioux City Explorers minor league baseball team play. J.D. Scholten, a 45-year-old state legislator for one of the Sioux City districts in the Iowa House, and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate from Iowa in next year’s election, was starting on the mound for the Explorers Thursday evening. He has been a professional ballplayer for many years. That kind of juxtaposition doesn’t happen every day, and I wanted to be there.

The game didn’t go the Explorers’ way. But for me—and I suspect for most of the folks in the handsome stadium—it didn’t spoil the evening. Remember the scene toward the end of one of my most-loved movies, Field of Dreams, where the late James Earl Jones expounds on the transcendent glory of American baseball? That’s what the Thursday evening game stirred in me. 

The evening was delightful: warm but comfortable. The fans cheered and moaned together, and some of the hits and defensive plays deserved considerable appreciation. Our seats, thanks to Deb, were perfect: right behind home plate, about 10 rows up. Directly in front of us were two close families comprising nine kids ranging in age from about 3 up to 12 or so. Their interest in the game was spotty, but they were having a great time with their parents and each other, and the moms and dads displayed perfect parenting skills to the enjoyment of all, including us.

Minor league baseball: an American institution that must be preserved. No one makes much money from it at the Explorer level, but it’s Americana at its finest.

Then the next morning Deb and Randy took us to a benefit pancake breakfast at Latham Park in the eastern part of Sioux City. It was sponsored by the Sioux City Masonic organization, with the free-will donations going to support the upkeep of the park. The event has been enjoyed as a Fourth of July institution in Sioux City for many years. 

The one-acre park, shaded by impressive mature hardwood trees, includes the historic three-story Latham family prairie farm house and the attractive grounds. It was gifted to the public by the heirs of the longtime Sioux City Latham family in their will, and hosts weddings, picnics, family reunions, photo shoots, church services, and other get-togethers. 

Some 350 or 400 breakfasters of several ethnicities—families, couples, and singles— enjoyed the leisurely meal of pancakes, sausage, and beverage of choice, cooked and served by volunteers with the help of a local Boy Scout troop. Deb and Randy have lived, worked, and volunteered in Sioux City for decades, and friends kept coming to our table to greet them and spend a few minutes in conversation. It was an event replicated in many places large and small across America.

And Kathy and I were able to reconnect with Zucchini Guy.

Who, you ask? Glad you did. 

Randy, a retired dentist, tends a magnificent garden at the Burnight home, producing way more vegetables than he and Deb can possibly consume. About a decade ago he founded Up From The Earth, a Sioux City charitable organization whose gardener members donate thousands of pounds of their extra vegetables every year to Sioux City area food pantries.

Mark Raymond, a superb Sioux City wordsmith specializing in vegetable puns, soon enlisted in the group, and started going to farmers’ markets to publicize Up From The Earth wearing a raffish green zucchini costume. Two years ago, when we were visiting Deb and Randy, we first met him in his full regalia at a farmers’ market. He was hard to miss. Every volunteer organization would benefit from someone like Zucchini Guy.

But back to the breakfast. As I scarfed down pancakes, the song by Chicago, “Saturday in the Park,” had wormed into my mind with its opening lyric: “Saturday in the park, I think it was the 4th of July.” Well, it was the 4th, and the words evoked the same meaning for me as they did for its composer Robert Lamm back in 1972:

“ . . . it was really that kind of peace and love thing that happened in Central Park and in parks all over the world, perhaps on a Saturday, where people just relax and enjoy each other’s presence, and the activities we observe and the feelings we get from feeling a part of a day like that.”

The whole 24-hour experience—Deb and Randy’s graciousness, the Thursday evening ball game, and the Friday morning park breakfast—straightened me out. Despite my concern over the state’s, and the nation’s, current direction, I reminded myself of my longstanding trust that we’ll be all right. That people, despite periodic lapses, tend to get it right in the end, and that America’s long and winding road is worthy of true patriotism because most of us care about each other.

Not a bad Fourth of July lesson.