Punctuating the months of summer vacation were two national holidays, Memorial Day and the "Fourth".   Because rural school sessions were traditionally of only eight months in the early twenties, Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, seemed to come in the heart of the summer.  In our community it was a day of great importance, a day of special remembering of the dead, and especially the war dead, as well as a day to honor veterans from all wars in which our country had been engaged.

     At our (country) home the national flag was taken from storage immediately upon arising and hung from its two rings flat against the porch wall, proclaiming for all passersby, though they might be few and far between, that on this day we would pause to give honor to those who had proudly served their country.  As a family we took special pride in the flag hung so colorfully in the brightness of the new day, the sun just peering over the horizon, and with not the slightest breeze to ruffle the early morning air.  On the evening of the preceding day we had joined the numerous visitors to the nearby cemetery to decorate ancestral graves, and so on this beautiful morning the cemetery was a sight to behold.  Walking among the graves, my parents remembered this one and that one who had passed on.

    At mid-morning we joined others of the locality for the Memorial Day service at the cemetery, at which a color guard was schduled to shoot a volley of blank shots over the grave of each departed soldier.  A pastor gave a brief address, there was a vocal rendition - a capella, and then the shots rang out.  Startled youngsters whimpered and clung to the security of a mother's skirts.  After the crowd had dispersed, boys had a heyday collecting the empty shell casings, and adults renewed old acquaintances returning for the day to decorate graves of departed parents and to pause briefly in memoriam.

    A much more impressive service brought us all into town for the afternoon.  After a band concert of national tunes on main street there was a march to the schoolhouse gymnasium by the band, the color guard, and a band of preschool youngsters serving as flower bearers.   At the schoolhouse they formed a procession, their entrance creating a solemn moment of rememberance.   Marching in the color guard were beterans of World War I and of the Spanish American War.   Veterans from the Civil War were of a great age and few in number.

    They were privileged to be seated on the stage along with local pastors and the speaker of the day, usually a figure in government, some of whom were bound to be politicians, others real statesmen.   Some fine oratory was delivered from that stage, and always an older child delivered the famed Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with great expression, having committed the whole to memory.  In my memory there were only two Civil War veterans in our community, and one was my grandfather, John M. Johnson.  At the end of the ceremony, a flower girl came up onto the stage to pin a flower on the lapel of these expecially honored veterans.

     Memories of my grandfather include visits to our home on threshing days to observe the interesting activities, but he spent much time in a rocker in the shade of the porch, since at his age there was a limit to the amount of heat he could stand.   He entertained us as children with tales of his service in the war.  I was impressed at his statemtnt that he had walked across the entire United States.   As a young child, he had come to America with his parents, while my maternal grandfather, John O. Ringstad, had emigrated as a young man at about the close of the Civil War.  Grandpa Ringstad shared our family home intermittently in his late years.  He was a born storyteller, and his tales of pioneering enriched our lives, giving us an interest in local history and an appreciation of twentieth century progress.  He witnessed the founding of the town of Ellsworth and was the first postmaster there.

    Memorial Day festivities did not end with the program at the gymnasium, but progressed to a cemetery just beyond the town.  Here the performance of the morning at country cemeteries was repeated on a much larger scale.  The band of flower girls and boys was led to each flag decked soldier's grave and, two by two, proceded to lay a spray of flowers on each honored grave.  Family members traditionally gathered about the graves of their departed family members.  Later we always stopped at the home of my grandfather for a bit of lunch, extending the visiting, and, reluctantly, ending the lovely day of remembrance.