Love in Dark Settings

Feel free to add your own quotations in the comments.

o--o--o

Theodore Roosevelt: DIARY (1869, as quoted in Small Voices: A Grownup's Treasury of Selections from the Diaries, Journals and Notebooks of Young Children, edited by Josef and Dorothy Berger)

July 4. Hastings. Hastings town was in the celtesh time before Christ. We had such a nice walk on the cliffs for two miles and coming back we made a feeble attempt at cheering the Fourth of July.

o--o--o

Laura Ingalls Wilder: LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE (1941, set in 1882)

It was time to go to the races. The whole crowd was moving across the railroad tracks and out on the prairie. On a pole set up there, the American flag fluttered against the sky. The sun was shining warm and a cool breeze was blowing.

Beside the flagpole a man rose up tall above the crowd. He was standing on something. The sound of talking died down, and he could be heard speaking.

"Well, boys," he said, "I'm not much good at public speaking, but today's the glorious Fourth. This the day and date when our forefathers cut loose from the despots of Europe. There wasn't many Americans at that time, but they wouldn't stand for any monarch tyrannizing over them. . . . Yes sir! We licked the British in 1776 and we licked 'em again in 1812, and we backed all the monarchies of Europe out of Mexico and off this continent less than twenty years ago, and by glory! Yessir, by Old Glory right here, waving over my head, any time the despots of Europe try to step on America's toes, we'll lick 'em again!"

"Hurray! Hurray!" everybody shouted.

o--o--o

Norma Johnston: THE SANCTUARY TREE (1977, set in 1901)

Ben was behind the barn with Peter and Leslie, and a kind of scared stillness hung in the air. The smell of firecrackers was everywhere, and Leslie . . . Leslie's eyes were enormous, and there was blood dripping from his face and fingers.

"I forgot how little the kid knows about these things," Ben said hoarsely. "I turned my back for a minute, and he tried to light a cherry bomb without me. It blew up on him." . . .

Even through soot and blood, it looked like a couple of teeth and two fingertips were gone. I ripped the bottom off my petticoat and tied it on Leslie's arm as a tourniquet, and pressed another wad against his bleeding lip. . . .

We were at the doctor's office quite a while, for Dr. Tuttle actually sewed the fingertips, hanging by a flap of skin, back on. It was a grisly and a painful process, but by the time he was bound up like the Spirit of '76, Leslie was looking rather proud of the whole affair.

"Not much we can do about those front teeth, but the dentist will give you new ones, once the swelling's down." Dr. Tuttle grinned. "Guess you'll have to miss out tonight on fried chicken and corn on the cob, but I don't figure the ice cream'll give you too much trouble."

o--o--o

Sydney Taylor: ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY (1951, set at the turn of the century)

From tenement house windows and from store fronts flew American flags of all sizes. The air was filled with the clang of cowbells and the blasts of horns. Youngsters in small groups yelled and hopped up and down as they waited with bated breath for their firecrackers to explode.

o--o--o

Sylvia McNeely: DIARY (1929, as quoted in Small Voices)

Wednesday, July 3. Oh Boy, tomorrow, fire works day. I got a lot of fireworks today. Grampa always used to buy us fireworks on the fourth but he can't now because he is dead and that makes me feel lonesome still.

o--o--o

Carolyn Haywood: PENNY GOES TO CAMP (1948)

"Don't you know what J 4 is?" exclaimed the older boy whose name was Charlie.

"Well, Buns says it's an aquaplane and Butch says it's a big ship and another fellow said it's a comet," said Penny.

"Oh, they're just kidding you," said Charlie. "You're both new here at camp, so they're kidding you. Just wait until J 4 comes. Boy! Oh, boy! Are you gonna be scared! J 4 is the scariest thing you ever saw. Only you can't see it. You just feel its presence."

Penny's and Tommy's eyes were bulging as they looked into Charlie's face. Charlie leaned toward them and said in a low voice, "J 4 comes every year just about this time. It comes in the middle of the night. It comes up through the woods from the lake."

Penny could feel a cold shiver going down his back.

"Sometimes it creeps along the ground," said Charlie, "and sometimes it's up in the treetops."

"Is it an animal?" said Tommy, and his teeth almost chattered.

"Nobody knows exactly what it is," said Charlie.

"How will I know when it gets here?"

"Oh, you'll know, all right," said Charlie. "You'll be so scared."

o--o--o

Hazel Wilson: HERBERT AGAIN (1951)

" . . . This town has not celebrated the Fourth for years in a way that appeals to boys. In making a safe and sane Fourth of July, you have merely made it safe and dull.

"Now, personally, I think it is a mistake to take all the noise out of a Fourth of July celebration. Maybe it should be the one day in the year when boys can make all the noise they want to make. A certain amount of noise wouldn't be bad for adults once a year either. Let a swell of joyous sound rise in the air to remind us that on this day we are honoring the birth of this great nation. Let cannon be fired off, and let there be bands marching and flags flying. I would not," said Uncle Horace, "go back to the unrestricted sale of fireworks and fire crackers, yet under supervision there should be noise to salute the glorious Fourth and rockets and flares to zip and zoom across the evening sky. . . ."

o--o--o

Keith Robertson: HENRY REED, INC. (1958)

Uncle Al says that outlawing fireworks was a good thing because every year a number of people, usually children, got badly burned. Some were maimed for life and some were killed.

"Of course, now that we've made the glorious Fourth safe by banning fireworks," he said, "people take to the highways in droves and kill each other with their automobiles. I suppose I should take you down to the shore today but frankly I'm afraid to. . . ."

o--o--o

Madeleine L'Engle: THE MOON BY NIGHT

[Not an Independence Day passage, but it's set in summertime, and it seems an appropriate way to end this post.]

That first night in Banff the first movie was called The Two Kingstons, and it was about Kingston in Ontario and Kingston in New York, and man who played the typical (so they said) American looked like Porky Pig and was always telling the Canadian off and trying to boss him around and showing off. All of a sudden, sitting there on the bleachers, surrounded by Canadians, we felt disliked, the way we'd heard Americans are abroad, and we felt very funny about it, funny peculiar, not funny haha.

"What did they mean by it?" John said indignantly as we walked back to the tent. "Why would they show a picture like that?"

Daddy said calmly, "After all, there's a certain amount of truth to it, even if it isn't very tactful, and even if it's only a half truth."

Rob and Suzy ran and played as usual on the way back to the tent, but I felt as though someone had scrawled in large letters on a wall, "AMERICANS GO HOME!" . . .

[A Canadian family nearby in the campground] had three kids, the youngest a boy about Rob's age, and two girls, the oldest about Suzy's age. The five of them got together (the kids weren't worried because Rob and Suzy were American) and asked if they could go down to the playground while breakfast was cooking. Mother and Daddy said okay as long as I went along to keep an eye on them. The Canadian parents (their name was York) didn't seem too keen on the idea, but finally they said the kids could go if they were back in fifteen minutes sharp.

We ran down to the playgrounds, so they'd have as much time as possible, and I sat on one of the bleachers and watched while they see-sawed and swang and ran around and had a marvelous time and didn't seem to be thinking about being Canadians and Americans at all. I really don't think kids think about things like that. It's all dumb grown-ups. Why is it that some grown-ups just seem to go on getting dumber and dumber year by year instead of learning anything?