DECORATION DAY/MEMORIAL DAY

Yesterday, on a blue-skied sunny Oregon Day, I re-enacted a ritual that was an accepted tradition in my family during my growing up days on the farm. We would gather buckets full of flowers, stash them between our legs in the back of the family Chrysler or when there were just the three of us--Mom, Dad, and me, maybe in the back of the pick-up.

It was Decoration Day! To the Pioneer Cemetary at the top the hill in Oregon City we'd go. Through the gate, winding down a narrow road through tilting gravestones of community founders, to the site of the Baker family plot. In those days there was a wrought iron fence surrounding the plot, and in the middle there stood a pink marble monument, tall and stately with the Baker name chisled at the base.

After we placed the flowers--large bunches of snowballs, lillacs, irises if they were in bloom, my Dad would wander the cemetary, with me in tow. We'd stop and read the inscriptions on the grave markers. From these brief statements, I learned the history of these hardy people who came across the Oregon Trail, settled this wild country, and then found their final resting place here in this peaceful spot.

Instead of snowballs--although there were snowballs on some of the graves when I arrived at the family plot--I bought several potted geraniums, watered them well, and installed them at the graves of my brother Kenneth, my Dad, and at the foot of the still standing monument which marks the Baker plot.

Then I sit on one of the gravestones and think. About these people. Three died before I was born. My grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Baker has been resting in this plot since 1901. Over a hundred years. I think about him, and who he was, and what he would think of his heirs and our times. He fought in the Civil War, and to tell the truth, I can't remember which side he fought on.

Then there is my Aunt Gladys Baker Olsen. The first woman Justice of the Peace in Oregon. She was known as the "hangin' judge" in Molalla where she ruled with an iron fist. Aunt Gladys was a fashionable women in those days, and while my other Aunts wore housedresses and aprons, she would come to dinner in a "Sunday dress", hose and high heeled shoes. She lived to be 101. I'd forgotten that.

I always feel better after I visit the Cemetary. It is not sad. The grieving for those I knew is past. Of course I miss them, but in many ways they are still with me. Several times when I've had a big decision to make at the Restaurant, I would go and sit there, between the graves of my brother and my Dad, and try to draw some wisdom from them. "What would they do?"

I like this Holiday, now recognized as Memorial Day, remembering those who have served in the Wars. So, following my few minutes of reverie, I did go back to the Maintenance Office and paid 50 cents for a small well-used American flag which I put on my brother's grave. He's buried in his Naval Uniform. Some 60 years after he'd served in WWII's Pacific Theater,

History lies here.