A View of the Valley

by Linda Schwanke There is something incredibly wholesome about Homecoming and the River Valley School Fair. It’s a celebration of rural American life at its best. Homecoming and the fair unite us, I think, because we share a bond that only we can understand, whether you’ve lived here six months or sixty years. The Valley is our home. Regardless of our differences, we share this place and this sense of belonging that is so endearing, so very charming, so appealing, that people have come from far and wide for years and years to visit and, after visiting, to live. (If they can – housing is in short supply in the Valley and has been for a while. But that’s another story.) Having a front row seat to all the buzz on the school campus during Homecoming makes it worth the hassles of it being a gigantic pain to come and go from home when school is starting or ending. We’ve been listening to the marching bands for weeks. It is such a treat to watch them. The middle schoolers are trying to figure out how to play AND march, no easy feat. The high school band members have to play, march and, essentially, dance around the field during half time. I am a complete sucker for drum lines and happily drop what I’m doing to sit on the porch to enjoy them all. When I took the Homecoming Court picture at the high school sign on Wood Street the kids were effervescent. I love the energy they have.  The FFA kids, whose picture I took last week for this issue, the kids were effervescent, too, but also ready to put in the hard work needed to host the 58th annual fair. I had a hard time picking which picture of them to share because they were all just so beautiful.  These two groups of kids (some of them are both on court and in FFA) are who we all are. They represent who we once were and they are our future. For them we will set aside a day to play at the school grounds and enjoy the fair, then go uptown to watch the parade – don’t forget it starts at 3 p.m. this year! – and eventually head back to watch the football game.  Or not. Maybe football isn’t your thing. Maybe it’s cross country or soccer or volleyball or swimming. Maybe sports aren’t your thing and you’ll just go to the fair. Or the parade. Maybe you have to work. Maybe Homecoming and the fair are not your thing at all. It doesn’t matter.  (The reason the parade has a later start than we’re used to is two fold: families mentioned it so they could be available after work to be at the parade with their kids and it also allows School Fair participants to clean up after they exhibit and get organized, Loren Glasbrenner, River Valley School District Administrator, told me in an email.) We are the people of the Valley. All 9,415 of us. (This is the figure that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, DHS, is reporting.) We will take one special day – next Friday, September 25 – and play nice. We will celebrate the Valley and our children. We will do our very best to make a bright tomorrow for all those kids while having fun with them.   Stay in touch. My phone number is 574-3159. I think it only fair to warn you that granddaughter Mildred has figured out how to answer our phones and is taking a particular delight in doing so when one of us accidentally  leaves our phone within reach of her octopus arms. So much delight that it is worth getting a time-out for, apparently, because we have warned her not to answer our phones. She just laughs a wicked little laugh in that gleeful way that toddlers who know they are being naughty have and dashes off with the phone in her hand. So please do call but if it’s not during business hours, I might not be the one to answer because I am not as fast as Mildred is.  You can also email me at homenewseditor@newspubinc.com or write to me at the Home News, P.O. Box 39, Spring Green WI 53588.  Visit our website at homenewsrv.com