Under the August moon… Where memories bloom

​The little park that holds a lifetime…

The focus begins on the moon. It has watched oceans and mountains, cities that never sleep, lonely stretches of Prairie, and little towns that hardly anyone outside Missouri has ever heard of. Then it begins its slow descent slipping past the clouds, finding Missouri, finding Macon County, coming to rest on one little city park in Bevier, Missouri. To a stranger, it’s just a park. A band stand. Grass. During most of the year a person can stand there and honestly wonder how Bevier Homecoming could ever fit inside it. It doesn’t seem possible that one city block can hold carnival rides, Nashville entertainers, family reunions, class reunions, parades, baby shows, lawn chairs, politicians, hamburgers by the thousands, and nearly everyone who has ever loved this little coal mining town. 

And yet, every August, that’s exactly what happens.

That’s one kind of Homecoming magic. The other kind takes a little longer to discover. If we sit beneath that August moon long enough, something begins to happen. At first we simply notice who’s there this year. Friends wave from across the park; children dart between the rides; teenagers circle the midway flirting a little, pretending not to notice one another. The smell of onions on Homecoming hamburgers drifts through the warm evening air, and a country song floats over the loudspeaker. Then, without realizing it, we stop looking with our eyes. We begin looking with memory’s heart. We don’t just see who is there. We see who used to be there. —The grandma digging through her purse for another dollar for one more ride. A friend who quietly hands your little boy a whole roll of ride tickets. The teacher who always worked beside you in the homecoming stand. Some are gone now, and some are sitting only a few rows away. Under that moon, time gets wonderfully confused, and the little park becomes larger than life. Homecoming doesn’t simply gather the people this year, but it gathers every version of ourselves that ever came before.

The Homecoming begins days before anyone hears the music. Carnival trucks rumble into town, and giant rides arrive, folded into impossible – looking puzzles of steel. One by one the rides unfold until the Midway takes shape. Workers string lights, and extension cords snake across the grass. We can barely wait to see this extravagant festival finished. The “Welcome Home” banner goes up over the stage.

Away from the park … Homecoming begins with brunches in small cafés, family reunions spilling out of restaurants, and classmates standing around, laughing over stories they have told 100 times. Around the community groups decorate floats, parade cars, bicycles, and little trucks. Many times children are already counting the tickets in their pockets.

The natural order of growing up can be explained by the way children navigate the Midway at the Homecoming. At first children walk with their parents. A few years later, parents  congregate nearby while their children go from ride to ride— within eyesight. Much later parents tell those children that they can just check back every hour. Eventually those little “toddlers” miraculously start arriving at Homecoming in their own cars, and they drift over to see their parents who are sitting in lawn chairs and bleachers in the crowd. 

Like moths to a flame, people come to the Homecoming for many reasons. Sometimes it’s the carnival, sometimes the parade, sometimes the Nashville performers. Many come because it’s the one weekend every year the family can count on being together.

The stage has welcomed some wonderful entertainers through the years: “Little” Jimmy Dickens, TG Shepherd, Ronnie McDowell, Kitty Wells,— others whose songs became part of the soundtrack of our summers. Many of those performers came to Bevier and almost became part of our families. They smiled, visited, signed autographs, laughed with people, and made everyone feel glad to be there. Just a very few acted as though they were doing our little town a favor by showing up. People remember which was which, and kindness has a much longer memory than fame. 

However, if I’m being perfectly honest… The greatest entertainer ever to walk across that stage never had his name on a poster. He was just five years old. On the night of that performance the official program for the evening had ended, but homecoming wasn’t finished. Homecoming never really ends when the last concert is over because many crowds stay, sit in lawn chairs or on the bleachers, and talk until the wee hours of the morning. Their children run themselves nearly to exhaustion. We can all remember little toddlers stretched out on the hard, wooden bleachers, a carefully tucked sweater spread over them, the dew gently falling on their sleeping faces while the grown-ups laughed and visited beneath the stars. On this particular night my little hot, sweaty boy wandered up the steps of the grandstand and ventured out center stage.  My little boy reached for the microphone, and then we realized no one had turned that off. Suddenly, clear as a bell, rang the voice of Bruce Springsteen.

“Born… In the USA…”

Now, I can’t carry a tune to any recognizable conclusion, but my son could. Even then, he wasn’t pretending to be a singer. He simply was one. He settled himself right in the middle of that great big stage as though he’d been performing there all his life. Then he sat down, crossed one little ankle over his knee, sang with complete confidence.  when the chorus came, he stretched the microphone toward 30 or more grown adults.

He boldly sang— “Born…”

We naturally responded— “In the USA!”

He grinned. A little louder. “Born… “

“… In the USA!” Soon every one of us was singing backup for one little boy who had us completely eating out of the palm of his hand. For years afterward Homecoming never let my son live this down. As he grew older my son was a wonderful, friendly, optimistic young man, but he was also just private enough that he probably would’ve been perfectly happy if everyone had forgotten about that night, but nobody ever did. He told me he couldn’t walk 5 feet through homecoming without somebody laughing and saying, “Hey! Aren’t you that little Bruce Springsteen?” 

The reputation of a homecoming hamburger has grown through the years to dynamic proportions. The concession stand is a legend in itself. If you’ve never wrapped, cooked, or sold a homecoming hamburger, you’ve missed one of the finest examples of organization you’ll ever see. Workers in the little kitchen may line up 30 hamburgers in wax paper, place in the warmer, stand back and think that they have things covered. Then someone says that they’ll take 12. Another voice announces they will take five, and somebody reaches in and announces that they have sold four more. Looking down, the worker realizes that 30 hamburgers have completely disappeared in a flash. 

I worked in the kitchen with fellow teachers on Saturdays after the big parade. It was blistering hot inside that screened kitchen the health department required, and by afternoon we all looked as though we had been cooked right along with hamburgers. But I’ll tell you something.

Theoretically – and I’m only speaking theoretically – stepping into that walk-in cooler for a moment with an icy cold Diet Coke in one hand and a hot Homecoming hamburger fresh off the grill in the other hand might have rivaled just about any vacation I can imagine. Only in theory, of course!

At night the lights come on across the Midway, and Homecoming settles into its evening rhythm. The Ferris Wheel turns against the sky, and children carry prizes nearly as big as they are. Wednesday night brings an ice cream social. Thursday night delivers local entertainment, the queen contest, little Mr. and Miss contest and other delights. Friday and Saturday bring Nashville entertainment. 

Many years ago my little gramma celebrated a birthday during Homecoming. She announced that her big desire was to go see “Little” Jimmy Dickens perform on stage in Bevier, so we set off with our lawn chairs to make that happen. I thought we’d leave after the first concert, but Gramma had other ideas, and we stayed until after the final drawing. My gramma, Minnie Herrington, was not much over 4 foot 11. By the time this particular Homecoming came around, she was well into her 80s, and we would’ve understood if the night had worn her out. My gramma had other plans. As we drove home, she announced that she believed she could stand a little birthday cake. I had the cake at my house, so we stopped and enjoyed it, and then she saw her presents in the corner of the room. Grandma decided it would be OK to open some gifts. Now grandma always took her pains opening presents, and she never hurried. I think we finished Homecoming birthday celebration about 3 o’clock in the morning.

Bevier knows how to put on quite a parade. On Saturdays an hour long extravaganza has just about every kind of entry you could hope for. We find floats displaying hours of work, hometown tractors, the fire truck, queens waving from convertibles, and decorated cars put together with imagination and inspiration. My son was always thinking of a new way to appear in the parade. As a toddler he and his cousin dressed in lederhosen and traveled in a little wagon covered in grapes to display their German heritage. One year we created a posterboard costume that looked very much like a ladybug, but my son insisted it was a “boy bug.” Walking with him through the homecoming parade route was a hot, overwhelming task. Most years he talked my dad and his into creating a vehicle wrapped around our lawn mower. He was Radar with the MASH Jeep; and he drove the “Heavy Chevy.”

Homecoming makes me think of lifelong friends, and I have to remember my teacher /lifelong buddy Doralee. She might be sitting at a brunch before the Homecoming with a familiar happy smile. She might be decorating her Camaro for the upcoming parade, or she might be displaying a ribbon proudly after riding with former students in the parade. And she might just be laughing and flirting in a flapper-fringed dress with Ronnie McDowel on the homecoming stage. People who know her story understand why these pictures make me smile.

In just a few days that old moon will look down again over the whole park as it becomes a little square of light. Only the moon and those of us who have caught the Homecoming spirit will realize how much life has been lived inside that little square. We really have to belong and have the spirit to understand. Years ago Doralee had the privilege of traveling with her students to Europe— Paris, London. As a new teacher she took a group of Bevier students to places people dream about seeing their whole lives. One evening those students were standing in Paris, France. The Eiffel Tower glittered above them, and people from all over the world surrounded. A hush was quietly developing within the group, and Doralee and her sister could not understand the sadness that seemed to issue from these young people. One of the kids looked at them and said something that stayed with all of us forever.— “You know we’re missing the Bevier Homecoming for this.”—  Imagine that? Standing in one of the world‘s greatest cities— and wishing you were back in that tiny park in Bevier, Missouri. I guess that makes perfect sense to those of us who know.

Every year babies make their very first trip to ride a merry-go-round, and little boys probably carry plastic swords they won at the carnival. Unlucky goldfish try to survive in their plastic bags until they can go home and swim in bowls of their own. Teenagers quietly become young adults and propose on the Ferris Wheel. Someday they’ll come back with children of their own.

Very soon Homecoming visitors will hear an old country song, catch the smell of a grilled hamburger, or see a banner stretched across the stage. Without warning they’ll be surrounded by people who really aren’t standing there anymore. That’s when they’ll understand Homecoming was never just something to attend. It quietly became part of who we are. Even if some of us don’t attend any more in person, we still go there with our spirit. We see old classmates, former students, friends, and family. We see people who are still there, and we see people we miss with all our hearts. Somehow they’re all there together, and that’s the miracle of Homecoming. It’s a place that somehow became a container for a lifetime. A place where one city block can hold generations, and yesterday walks comfortably beside today. All of it fits together under the same August sky and that old moon. And under that August moon, nothing else really matters. For one wonderful weekend, we all go home again.