Independence Day 2011 is nearly over. The kids have thrown candy from floats and wagons in the neighborhood parade - a slice of true Americana that we never miss - the boat has made numerous circles of the lake with various cousins tubing and skiing, and the grill is heating up for the quintessential cookout before the big Bang of fireworks closes out the day.
A few weeks ago, I found my grandmother's 48-star flag. (Not the soap-making grandmother - the other one!) You know how things get put away, and then you come across them while looking for something else? The box with the old flag in it was right there, so I opened it. This is no raggedy-old flag. It is pristine, constructed of cotton, and the seams are double-stitched. It is from my grandmother's store, which is a story in itself.
Somewhere in the history of all families in the US is an immigration story, and our family is no different. Germany in the 1920s was experiencing severe economic woes. My grandparents made the difficult decision to move to America, and they and my father, who was four years old at the time, immigrated to the US in 1925 from a tiny village outside of Bendorf, Germany. After settling in West Bend, Wisconsin, my grandfather found work at the West Bend Company (think pots and pans) in the tool & die division. Eventually they saved enough money to build a house on North Street in West Bend - and to teach herself English, my grandmother opened a neighborhood grocery store in the front room of that house. Mueller's Cash Store supplied the neighborhood with groceries through the Great Depression and into WWII, 1932 - 1944, and the flag was used at the store during that time. I love the old photo above with the curtains in the store windows and the sandwich board advertising Consumer's Homade Ice Cream. If you look closely, you can see my father's fox terrier Jimmy, peeking through the door at the camera. That's my grandmother, Maria Dielentheis Mueller (left), my father, William Mueller (center), and a family friend from Detroit on the right. My grandfather took the photo from the street. In the photo below, Grandma & Grandpa (Maria & Henry Mueller) stand at the store counter.
Grandma's flag was flown outside the store on special occasions and was carefully put away when the store closed in 1944.
To my grandparents, the United States represented freedom and opportunity and unending possibility. It is easy to forget the courage and hard work of those who made life in the United States their dream and their reality and did it as much for the future generations of their families as for themselves. That beautiful old flag isn't just a symbol of the freedoms fought for in 1776 and beyond. For me it is also a symbol of the love and hard work and sacrifice it takes to build a family and a nation.
Happy Fourth of July!
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