Friday, May 22nd, 2020 at 8:16 AM Dewy Grass Acres South Streator, Illinois I drove up to ALDI for the weekly grocery shopping. Passing through the heart of downtown Streator, I noticed that flags had been erected to hang out over the main streets, Bloomington Boulevard and Park Avenue. I had not noticed a crew that had put up hundreds of flags yesterday, but the flags tell me the story of their work. The hundred days of summer have arrived again. Memorial Day had slipped up on me again. I spent the hundred days of summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day in Dallas Texas at Seven Eleven Headquarters in 2006. Fourteen years later, it looks as if I’ll celebrate summer on the prairie in Streator. I saw no notice of a morning parade in the Streator Times. Marching shoulder to shoulder must be difficult to pull off with social distance respected. I have to assume the annual parade had to be cancelled. Maybe the local veterans will lay wreaths on the monuments that occupy the southeastern corner of City Park. Wearing masks and standing six feet apart, a visit to the monuments engraved with names of the local casualties can be made safely. I photographed the parade that marched up the hill from Limestone Creek last year in Fayetteville. Units came from the veterans clubs of Manlius and Dewitt to fill out the line up. We even hosted a pipe and drum corp from the Syracuse Police Department. I caught a series of pictures of the leader tossing his baton in the air. I must have taken a thousand photographs as the fire trucks and mounted policemen and the uniformed soldiers passed. I'll need to revisit my camera roll to see if I want to post the better images on my blog. I see no reason to keep the images to myself on a card. I didn't follow the procession down to Beard Park, the city park where Grover Cleveland swam in a reservoir of the Ledyard Canal, a canal that turned a mill and powered a furniture factory. I now regret not making the walk and paying my respects as the veterans fired a twenty-one gun salute. I had little idea that a year later we would be prevented from gathering for the annual observance. Illinois has begun allowing a few businesses to open. As I drove up the street festooned with flags, I noticed a family gathered outside a funeral home, hugging one another, comforting one another. I was happy to see a gathering downtown after seventy days of experiencing Streator as a ghost town. All the guests wore surgical masks, so I didn’t worry for them. We have been blessed by our city's remote location on the prairie. Streator has been fortunate since the beginning of March. Not one case of Covid-19 has been found among the citizens of the city, fourteen thousand strong. Fourteen thousand people who have been Streator Strong. On Mother’s Day, my younger brother Eddie and his wife Allison drove out to visit dad and mom’s graves at Great Lakes National Cemetery, located on Fagan Lake near Holly, Michigan. I was glad he posted pictures of their tombstones on Facebook. I hadn’t seen the stone yet. I enlarged the photographs with my fingers but I couldn’t make out all of the text. It must have been quiet on Mother’s Day. I wonder if Memorial Day will also be a quiet day on the ridge above Lake Fagan. I know my mother Joan Elizabeth loved the view.
Matthew Brady, photographer
Library of Congress
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