Curly Abel

On this Independence Day as it approaches 8:00am, I find myself drinking coffee in a comfortable chair while an old movie plays in the background, doing my best to avoid getting off my butt and actually, you know, getting going on some chores.

I really do want to get to the housework, mostly because that’s the only way to be DONE with housework for another day, but this idea has been roiling about in my subconscious for a couple of days and it came together just as I awakened this morning. Or perhaps this is what woke me up.

Today being July 4^th, I see lots of evidence of what passes for patriotic fervor in this country. Don’t get me wrong - the tone of that sentence should not be construed as indicating I eschew love of country. I believe it’s a natural part of our culture and perhaps even embedded in our DNA to cherish from the inside out – children, then spouse, then self, friends,  neighbors, community, state, country…. It’s how we form our allegiances.

I’m no different.

It’s how we express those allegiances that seems sometimes to set me apart even from those close friends and family who have helped form my world view.

I don’t much care for flag waving. I will never make a pledge of fealty to a piece of cloth. That doesn’t mean I don’t love this country or that the photo of the Marines raising the flag on Suribachi fails to tweak my emotions. I’m just not into flags. Sorry, Sheldon!

I don’t trust in any god simply because I can’t accept direction from an entity whose existence I doubt in any form yet described by the various religions. But that doesn’t mean I believe I am an example of the highest intelligence ever in the universe. I accept a power greater than myself – I simply see no point in trying to define a god according to humanly needs and wants and superstitions.

 Therefore, I see as specious any attempt to join the attentions of an ill-defined and most likely imaginary supreme being to the assumed best interests of a country that is deeply divided over such simple matters as gun control and a woman’s right to the sanctity of her own corpus.

Don’t get me wrong, those of you who are tempted to pray for my soul when your knees hit the hardwood this evening. I neither condemn nor scoff at your most deeply held beliefs. I wish I could accept as Truth one of the religious constructs and thus come to believe that all will be sorted out in the end. But belief for me is based on accumulated evidence as filtered through one’s own screening mechanism, which is in turn formed of experience and learning and yes, even for me, deeply held even if unacknowledged superstitions. And my filter finds the existence of a definable god unlikely.

I don’t believe that the firing off of pyrotechnics necessarily prompts any emotion connected to the afore-mentioned love of country. For me, it’s just a good show and one best left to the pros, so please don’t set off your flying bombs over my roof. (Besides, it scares the bejeesus out of our dogs, so July 4^th has for years been an event celebrated primarily by staying home with the canines, feeding them doggie downers and trying to keep them calm. My furry buddies are petrified of your explosives. So please just stop.)

Enough of what I don’t believe. I am – and I suspect this applies equally to many of you – an odd amalgam of what I know versus what I like to believe, of what I’ve seen and heard, tempered by what I hope to be the case.

As a young man, I put on my country’s uniform as a dedicated and hopeful volunteer when most of my friends were desperate to find ways to avoid the draft. Then just a few years later, I took off the uniform forever as a registered conscientious objector. And forty years down the road of life, I still couldn’t tell you which ‘me’ was true.

I’ve voted in every election since 1972, excepting some local frays into which I declined to insert myself, and with  my voting record in front of you and no other evidence, I would defy you to confidently identify me as Democrat, Republican, or other.

In short, I don’t easily align with views in which I can’t personally find the value. But please don’t take my failure to wave a flag as evidence of a lack of love of country. I do love my country but I celebrate it in my own way.

There’s been lots of loose talk of late about heroes. We seem to take the term lightly and I wish we didn’t because it leaves a void of available descriptors when someone acts truly heroically. So I won’t call my friend Curly a hero. I’ll just tell you about her.

 I came across Emma “Curly” Abel years ago when Mary and the girls and I were on a road trip around the country. As we passed through Broadwater, Nebraska, one storefront caught my eye so abruptly and surely that I insisted we stop and take a photo. (For those of you who’ve read this story before, I’ll just hope you agree it bears repeating.)

The Broadwater Library demanded my attention because it was a splash of fresh color in an otherwise fairly dusty little town. It stood out in a way that made my head swivel and I just had to cross the street to peer in the window.

 

 

                             The library was charming and when I got home from our trip, I did a little research. The librarian was Emma Abel and she had taken it from a tiny reading room to a fully functional – even if still tiny – bibliotheque. I saw a computer and shelves of books and a reading area and it was all neat, attractive fresh.

 Fresh, in this tiny town of 160 souls.

Curly built this library. Secured the space, got books from the state library association, a computer from the Gates Foundation, Internet access, carpet, paint. And for six hours each week, the children of the farms around Broadwater had a place to come. Into their isolated world, she brought – the world.

So anyway, I put a posting on our family’s then-website about Curly and her library. And years later I blogged about her. I’ve never forgotten her. But yesterday, while I was thinking about the holiday now upon us, I got to thinking about what really says ‘America’ to me. And I thought of Curly.

When I contacted her those years ago, she was entirely unimpressed about my admiration for the work she’d done. And if you Google her, you’ll quickly learn that she was a regular gal. Church member, Cub Scout leader, 4-H mentor. She worked at a hardware store and lived her life.

And brought the world to the children of Broadwater, Nebraska.

Emma Abel doesn’t get a whole lot of mention in our national annals. If you do Google her, one of the first photos that will come up is the one I took of the library. So, how famous could she be, right? But she is America to me.

This evening, while the yahoos fire off their bottle rockets, I’ll be home calming the dogs. And I’ll think of Emma Abel.

 

 Emma “Curly” Abel, April 27, 1929 – November 16, 2007