Decoration Day” must be exclusively an old-time southern tradition. Many of my friends here in Missouri didn’t really know what it meant when I said I was heading down to Arkansas a few weekends ago for “Decoration.”
My dad’s mom was born and raised on Nubbin Hill in Leslie, Ark. The old church building there served as both school and church for my great-grandfather, my grandma and all her siblings, and many other members of my family and my family’s friends. Grandma explained “Decoration” in July. Her take is they always decorated the graves in the heat of summer, because by this time of year the crops have been “laid by,” but during Memorial Weekend they were always too busy in the fields.
So, Nubbin Hill Cemetery is now freshly decorated with silk flowers. I met lots of my extended family, as we each remembered family members gone on. We ate, ate and ate and there was still food left over. Grandma fondly remembered walking to and from school and church there. Even after a hard day working in the fields, she noted they were never too tired to walk to their friends’ homes to visit.
It’s easy to forget those days gone by, a simpler time of one-room schoolhouses, of walking miles just to spend some time with friends. I hope we, as a culture, aren’t losing the simple pleasures of getting together for a picnic lunch, escaping the hot sun under tall pines and enjoying the best old-fashioned entertainment: Visiting with friends.
God Bless,
