Memorial Day 2014

In most of the country, Memorial Day -- besides being a patriotic holiday commemorating those who died in defense of the country -- is considered the beginning of summer. Or rather, Memorial Day Weekend is.

In the Dells, Memorial Day Weekend is the Beginning of the Season -- the Tourist Season. Which, in the Dells, Waterpark Capital of the World, don't ya know, is like the pre-Christmas shopping season for retailers. The main industry (only industry?) in town is tourism, so the next three months is when lots of people make pretty much all the money they are going to make this year.

So our little community of Wisconsin Dells+Lake Delton -- combined permanent population under 10,000 -- swells by many tens of thousands more each weekend from now until Labor Day, and on most weekdays after July 4. It brings in the cash, but it adds lots of pressure to the roads and other infrastructure. Inevitably, you see bumper stickers like this one popping up:

 

The people who live here year round celebrate Memorial Day in the usual small-town-America way, though. There is a parade that winds eight or nine blocks through downtown before the businesses open Monday morning. (Wouldn't want those tourists to be unable to get to the shops!) It consists of an honor guard carrying flags, veterans riding in old military vehicles and waving, elementary school children riding bicycles decorated with red-white-and-blue ribbons, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts, the local high school band and every fire truck and emergency vehicle the organizers can scrape up along with the uniformed first responders marching proudly along. People line the sidewalks on both side of the street to wave and yell at relatives and neighbors. We always sit near the end of the parade route, in front of Bowman House, so that we will already be at Bowman Park for the service that follows immediately after.

The first such event we attended after moving here from Chicago was in 2006. The most touching part of the program that year was the reading of the names of all the local military personnel who died in wars beginning with the Civil War. For all those who died in World War I and after, they included a brief biography. It was the sort of thing that can probably only happen in a small town where many of the families of those who died are still around. 

Although we have continued to attend the parade and memorial service every year, except when it was rained out or we were out of town, they have never repeated the reading of the names. I miss it. I didn't grow up here, like Tom did. Hearing the names and little things like when they had graduated from Wisconsin Dells High School helped me feel connected to the new place.

And Memorial Day is about connections -- to a season, to a nation, to a small town, to history, even, I suppose, to a local economy.