August 3, 2020
Just Saying…
A few Augusts to Remember
By Q.C. Jones
For the record, I have mixed feelings about the whole August thing. Some say it’s the best month of summer. A few schedule family vacations for August; they want the turbulent weather of June and July behind them. Gardeners look forward to the bountiful crops of fresh tomatoes and other treats. Good for them, but I suffer deep thoughts of August despair. Allow me to relate.
As a youngster, I was Tom Sawyer, Roy Rogers, Jamie McPheeters, and Davy Crocket rolled into one barrel-chested kid. While I was assigned several household chores, I did my best to make my bed, straighten my room, and clean the kitchen floor early in the day. I took pride in the kitchen floor thing, because it was a task passed down from my dad, who was assigned the kitchen cleaning thing as a kid. As soon as the tedium of housework was finished off, I donned my trusty cowboy hat or coonskin cap and blasted through the old screen door for adventure.
We lived in the country. Directly behind our house was a lake, teeming with fish, frogs, and dragonflies with a healthy dose of snakes and turtles. Across the road laid Flat Branch Creek. The creek went on for miles and was surrounded by forest, swamps, and backwaters. Blackberry bushes thrived in the low land. A quarter-mile away was a long-forgotten highway with a never-ending supply of old bottles and miscellaneous oddities from the 1920s. If ever there existed a richer environment for adventures, this one would make the cut. It was possible for a seven-year-old boy to disappear at 10 and be gone till dusk.
I reenacted Tom Sawyer’s adventures, lived the life of pirates, battled Santa Anna’s bloodthirsty army in a makeshift Alamo, and defended a miniature Pork Chop Hill from bayonet-yielding Commies. Because even battle-hardened troops of the pre-pubescent variety require food, my friends and I ate peanut butter flavored field rations; often enjoying this grub while settled around a Roy Rogers campfire.
Against this backdrop that August came knocking. Back in the days when education consisted of reading, writing, and arithmetic (at the end of a hickory stick), we learned how to tell time and use a calendar early. Sometime during all these summer adventures, I had an epiphany. When the dog days of summer draw near, it’s not just the dogs who suffer. Soon the old clock on the wall would say, “It’s school time.” Teachers, homework, structure, and short recesses would be the new grind. From that point on, August became greatly diminished in my developing brain.
We promised Augusts to remember. So, allow me to jump over a decade and place myself in August of my 18th year. A lot happened over those ten years. Let me give you a machine guy blast of life changes. I started working at my family’s Texaco station; and I like it. learned to drive, got a driver’s license and mastered cruising around my hometown’s Square, and recognized a natural attraction to pretty girls. Oh, did I happen to mention, I discovered that effervescent amber fluid called beer.
Allow me to digress for a moment. Being near St. Louis, to discover beer meant discovering the founder of our liquid feast, August Anheuser Busch Sr. Besides being the second in a long line of beer makers, Mr. Busch provides me with a second August reference. I did promise “a few” and intend to deliver more. Back to the August of the 18th year story already in progress.
August found me preparing for another adventure. I brimmed with excitement as I gathered the proper tools for college. Briefcase for carrying books (backpacks were yet to be in vogue), the proper assortment of bellbottom jeans, an army trunk for transporting junk, and an assortment of items for grooming joined my newly gifted fondue pot for cooking soup in my room.
As I looked forward to launching out on my “adult” life, I was confident and ready to prepare for the future. I actually and honestly looked forward to the start of school. Plus, I wanted to live out the words of the then-popular Doors song Palace of Exile: “For seven years I dwelt, in the loose palace of exile. Playing strange games with the girls on the island. Now I have come again, to the land of the fair, and the strong, and the wise.” It was that kind of time.
Another August to remember.
There is no Horatio Alger story that eclipses the life of Captain August Reimers. Orphaned at age 11, August worked on the riverboats out of St. Louis as a teen. He enlisted in the Union Army just six days following Fort Sumpter, was wounded three times but kept up his service and left the army as a Captain. He came to Davenport in 1871, started a candy factory and built an impressive business empire. I remember him each time I drive by his house “The Claremont” which is now the McGinnis-Chambers Funeral home on the edge of Davenport and Bettendorf on River Drive. Horatio Alger eat your heart out.
Just saying…
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