My Life - Chapter One

Chapter One - Death Before Life

The long, tree-lined highway leading into the small farming town is so straight that you can see almost to the Canadian boarder -- some 20 miles beyond. As you approach the intersection leading to town is the Pioneer Cemetery on your right and mirrored on the other side is the Dutch Cemetery.
The Dutch Cemetery was always neater and tidier than the "white" cemetery. It was odd growing up in Lynden. Long before I knew of race tensions between blacks and whites, I knew of the tensions between the Dutch and "us".
When we moved about a hundred miles south to the milltown of Everett, I found myself in a fight one day with the neighbor kids. In a fit of anger and frustration, I called them the worst name I could.
Shortly thereafter, the other kid’s parents paid a visit to my parents to say they didn’t like me swearing at their kids. "And by the way, what did Greg mean when he said ‘you’re a damn Dutchman’?"
The Dutch in Lynden were more than descendants of immigrants from Holland. They were members of the Dutch Reformed Church. They didn’t drink or swear. Something particularly odd in a farming town. They kept some of their language and would talk in Dutch when us "whites" were around. They even had their own school system. That was another oddity. In a tiny little town, there were two school systems. One public. One private and Christian. Both were filled with big, athletic farm boys. It was common to have the two high schools face each other in state athletic play-offs.
My dad owned one of two taverns in this town. He knew the secrets about which Dutchmen came in for a beer or two.
In a strange circle of life, I became a father for the first time at the age of 42, the same age of my father when I was born.
My early recollections of my family mostly involved death and that cemetery entering Lynden. Most of my relatives were dead and buried in that cemetery. My mom was devoted to placing flowers on their graves. She would take me along for her duty. I remember how unique it was to use an old hand-pump to get water at the cemetery for the flower jars. Mom would show me different graves and explain the family relationship of each. Rather than being bounced on the knees of living relatives as a child, I was shown the final resting place in the Lynden Cemetery. Later I would bury first my father, then my mother in this place.