Collected written works | Gary Marx
From the Newspaper Archives
Knee high by the Fourth of July
Sometimes all the elements just fall into place.
A couple of days ago, I was driving on the Bluff Road cutting up north of Prairie du Rocher on my way to St. Louis. It’s my favorite road in the world. The bluffs rise sharply to the right, broken every now and then by a hollow or a creek. The bottomlands level off to the left and stretch out in rolling green fields of bean and corn all the way to the levee.
I know these fields. Seems like I’ve known them forever.
The truck was handling well, the morning skies were blue, my window was open. And on the radio someone was strumming out a version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is My Land.” I was stunned by the moment, by the grandeur and the simplicity of it all, by the almost divine coincidence of song and sensibility. And in that June-cool morning all seemed right with the world. I didn’t think it could get any better.
But I was wrong.
The road swept me gently to the left, dipping away from the bluff, and my truck slipped silently into a corridor of sun-laced corn as tall as the cab. When one glorious moment passes to yet another, all you can say is “ah…” and if one were prone to metaphor, the womb of the Earth had just swallowed me up, Ford Ranger and all.
I think the bliss I felt that day was fed, somewhat, by the childhood memories I harbor of family vacations in the pre-interstate days. Back then you couldn’t get from here to there except by the two-lanes that took you into all the little towns and kept you close to the landscape.
On those trips, we’d make a game of counting cows and we’d point out weathered barns to each other. We’d anticipate the Burma Shave signs. I’d gaze down side roads that wandered off in inviting directions. More than once I vowed to come back when I was old enough and follow this road or that. There were a lot of those roads.
I remember looking out of the window from the back seat, watching fence posts whip by and tracing the shadow of the car as it dipped and rose along the shoulder of the highway. The corn was so close to the road you could almost reach out and touch it.
I can still hear my Dad say — he’d say this almost every year — that if the corn were knee-high by the Fourth of July it would be a good crop. “Yeah, man,” he’d say, looking out across the field, “looks like a good year.”
I took his word as gospel, but somehow his observation seemed to be more than just an assessment of the crop. I don’t know how or why — maybe because we were on vacation when he said it and because the corn was always tall — but for me “knee-high by the Fourth of July” was a measuring stick for happiness in general.
As time passed, we took fewer vacations. The roads got wider and the crops got further away. The cars got faster and there were more of them. We got older.
Not everything has to change so quickly, though. The bluffs haven’t gone away. The fields still roll out toward the horizon, and the side roads still call my name. When you remember things like that, when all the elements fall into place, you feel blessed just to be able to see the day. And sometimes there’s a perfect birdsong silence in the morning and you can see the world the way Woody Guthrie did when he penned that song.
At those times, when I’m driving and smiling and feeling the cool shade in the shadow of corn that’s already tasseled out and taller than my truck, I can hear Dad’s voice as if it were yesterday.
Yeah, man. It’s knee high and it’s not even the Fourth of July.
