Here is a detour down memory lane or maybe the Primrose Path of flowers. It is a good likely-hood that most of you have trodden both, but it is those thorny Primroses that can tell the more interesting stories, or maybe you don’t talk about that.
One of the questionable benefits of hanging on so long is the memories of another time and place. Things like a Hobo sitting on the back steps eating a handout Mother made for him, or the popular songs like “Minnie the Moocher” and “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” and of course F.D. R. and the WPA and NRA.
With the above as background I take you to 1933-34 school year to see the Intermediate School’s (Junior High School to you youngsters) spring production of a memorable Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta—the name of which escapes me now. Maybe “the Mikado” or “HMS Pinafore”. No matter, the point of all of this is in deference to the “Flower” topic for our assignment today. The vision you’ll see and hear is one of all 195 pre-teen sopranos—boys and girls alike—straining to the jaunty words of “The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring,” etc., etc.
Here I present another flower. Long ago there was a World War I commemoration celebrated on November 11th called Armistice Day (later renamed Veteran’s Day in 1954). At school we were taught about that war and the terrible loss of lives to our country and our Allies’. In honor of the occasion volunteers and some veterans peopled the street corners with bouquets of red paper poppies, a symbol of Flanders Field where so many rested. With each contribution you received a poppy.
A sudden change of geography and landscape brought a new world of flowers to me. Imagine discovering magnolia trees, Poinciana trees, citrus trees, bougainvilleas, hibiscus in bloom, sights you’ve never seen up north. Those are just a few flowers and horticulture exposed to a kid from Illinois. Florida in 1939 was a complete culture shock.
A return to the land of four seasons and it was time for Victory Gardens, not many flowers except for flowering fruit trees. And perhaps the Junior-Senior Prom and the appropriate gardenia or camellias corsage for a young woman who didn’t have a date until the night before the dance. It was then that I began to wonder why the really sought-after girls didn’t attract me as much as the girls who were well known for their friendliness to dumb little weird boys like me.
Then there were the war years and all of those funereal wreaths, and the Japanese cherry blossom trees in Washington DC.
That war was followed by one more conflict after another until today. Believe me there aren’t enough paper poppies to meet the never ending need.
For all the beauty of nature’s abundant flowers, sometimes I feel when we push aside the curtain of flowers; our flower of the future will be a man-eating species.
And if that doesn’t catch us, there is always Mother Nature’s way—bud-bloom-wilt-and wither and return to where it all originated.
The Flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, tra-la.
(I really like being a sensitive, thoughtful pansy—since I can’t be man of my dreams with lots of hair on my chest.) You do the best you are able to.
© 13 February 2017
About the Author
