Traditions.  Those patterns of behavior that carry on through time and provide a comforting structure to one’s life.  I grew up thinking that traditions were everywhere, but I have since discovered that they have to be nurtured and honored by the community or they will never take root and live on for generations.

Granted, communities are perceived differently by natives and by transplants.  Transplants do not always see local events the way that people do who have grown up there.  I am a transplant where I live now.  So in my opinion as an outsider, the town I live in currently, Scranton, has not found its traditions that embrace the entire community.  There have been attempts, such as the “Saturday in the Park” event, that is the last Saturday in June, but it is a glorified family reunion that uses city funding.  A few families gather in their lawn chairs and visit and have a cook-out, a couple vendors set up their tents (sno-cones and t-shirts), there are a couple blow-up rides, there’s a sand volleyball game, and it all ends with a fireworks display.  But few people attend, and the attendance has grown smaller and smaller.  Now the event has been retitled “Liberty Days” or some such thing.  Another group is trying to establish a new event, “Bubba Day” to honor a fellow in their family who died much too young.  It is a couple weeks before the other event, and most of us in town aren’t aware of it until we are startled awake by a 10 PM fireworks display out of nowhere that sends pets and small children scrambling for safety.  There is something called a “Marathon”, which is a 2 or 3 day around-the-clock softball/baseball tournament; it draws all the softball/baseball fans from surrounding communities, but it again is really only of interest to those who are into that sort of thing.  When your town only has around 750 people in it, and you can only get 10% of the town onboard for an event, attendance is pretty paltry.  I think this is simply a hazard of being a bedroom community; few people work in the community and only come home to sleep before driving the next day to another town for work and entertainment.  There is a real disconnect among residents here.  When we first moved to this town, the city council members were trying to find ways to combat this and bring the community together, but that effort has dwindled away.  Pockets of people try to make a difference, but it is not embraced by the community as a whole.  The community is very passive when it comes to making changes.

The town I was raised in, WaKeeney, has traditions.  It has traditions that are still alive and well today that I experienced when I was a kid there 30+ years ago.  How do I know this?  Social media, of course.  I’m still friends online with a number of people who continue to live in WaKeeney, and I can see their traditions through their posts.  WaKeeney is not a huge town; it was roughly 2500 people when I lived there, and there are around 1800 people living there now.  But at any given time of the year, everyone in that town knows what is going on whether they participate or not personally.

It is a farming community, and you know when it’s sale day at the sale barn–the wind always catches it just right and fills the town with the smell of cow pies.  You don’t have to be a farmer or someone buying and selling livestock to go to the sale barn and eat some great food and delicious pie on sale day.  And during the summer wheat harvest, it seems like everyone is called to action.  You are either on a combine or driving a truck to the grain elevator and waiting in line with dozens of other drivers, or you are hauling coolers of water to the custom cutter crews and bringing homecooked meals to the field several times a day.  Everyone sits on the tailgate of a truck covered in dust and sweat, eating and drinking and watching the skies for rain clouds and discussing the quality of the harvest.  If you are not actively participating in the harvest, you are driving at a leisurely pace behind mammoth farm implements.

During the winter months, everyone knows the high school kids are going to be selling boxes of fruit or nuts or greenery as a fundraiser.  And everyone knows WaKeeney is the Christmas City of the High Plains.  The lights are strung throughout downtown, the real greenery is spiraled up the metal framework, and after Thanksgiving there is a community lighting ceremony with caroling and hot cocoa and the season comes alive.  After I moved away, they added to the tradition; there is now a spot on Main Street that is permanently decorated as the North Pole.  The boy scouts sell Christmas trees, and the whole town celebrates the season.

Every Fourth of July, we would trek into town from the farm, even though we could see the display from our front porch.  Everyone would gather in the early evening for free watermelon at the fairgrounds.  The long tables would be set up at the grandstand entrance and volunteers would be slicing watermelon into wedges and handing them out to everyone.  Talk about a wet sticky mess–the juice was running down our arms and the ground was littered with black seeds as we swatted the flies away.  Then we all walked into the grandstands and found seats and watched the fireworks display.  It may not have been the whole community, but it was pretty close as the grandstands were filled with people oohing and ahhing at the fireworks.

Right now it’s fair season.  All the hard work the 4H kids put in all year has finally paid off.  They get to bring their exhibits to the fairgrounds and compete for ribbons.  The buildings have been swept out and cleaned up by volunteers who put in long nights.  Floats have been constructed; back in my day, we met for weeks and pushed tissue paper through chicken wire to create our floats.  One year our float was a giant slice of watermelon.  Kids are busy decking out their bikes with streamers for the big parade and hoping they don’t get put behind the horses this year.  All of the 4H groups are creating booth displays; so many years my Barbie dolls were recruited to provide some people for our displays.  Even non-4H people are excitedly bringing their exhibits.  Plates of fruits and vegetables fresh from the garden are set up on tables.  Small vases of fragrant flowers are lined up in rows in the flower booth.  Needlework is resting in glass cases.  Soon the carnival will arrive in town and the fairgrounds will be filled with lights and sounds and black cables snaking along the ground as carnies call out to everyone walking by to come and play their games and ride their rides. The barns will be filled with laughter and blowing fans and cows chewing their feed and swishing their tails as kids try to groom them and get them ready to be shown.  Kids will be reaching through the slats of the pens to pet the sheep and running through the pig area pinching their noses closed.  Outside on the concrete slab animals will be getting showered to remove any mud and muck.

Traditions are important.  They give people a sense of security.  There are things people can count on.  Do traditions stay the same?  No.  I know if I were to go back to my hometown, there will be changes to the traditions.  Some parts of the traditions have been let go, others have been improved.  But the important thing is that the community comes together and reminds each other that they are just that–a community.  I can only hope that each new generation understands and honors the traditions that create their community.