‘Jimmy Dunne Says’

‘A Sunday Morning in the Park’

The Palisadian-Post presents an homage to Will Rogers’ column, “Will Rogers Says,” with a column by Palisadian Jimmy Dunne—on life in the “greatest town in America.”

There’s a beautiful flower with a lousy name. I’ve loved it since I was a kid in the winters of the Midwest.

The crocus flower.

It’s a stunning, purple, bulbed flower—brilliantly framed in green leaves. When snow covers the rich soil, there’s one flower that finds its way.

One flower whose will is so strong that it pushes, against all odds, until it sticks its head out of the snow.

When it does, it’s just glorious. A sea of snow—and there it is, in all its majesty.

This gentle, lovely, wildly wondrous gift is there to admire. To give a hope for tomorrow. To remind us what is deep in our roots.

It reminds us of what will means. What passion means. What life means.

It’s an early Sunday morning at Veterans Gardens in town. The moisture from the ocean still beads on the grass. The eastern sun is warming everything in this sanctuary.

And there they were, to my wonderful surprise. Five crocus flowers.

Five spirited Boy Scouts from families in town, armed with buckets of soap, and water, and scrubbers.

Eighth-grade Patrol Leader Santiago Rawlins, Tyler Bunn, Finn Fox, Jake Bunn and Tucker Rowland.

They all got up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to clean the picnic tables, and the military panels, and the words that define our town at the base of our flagpole.

They never stopped for two straight hours.

They removed graffiti from one of the picnic tables in the Navy Garden. They picked up little pieces of rubbish in the bushes. They scrubbed up the scoreboards on the bocce courts.

Here’s what I know for sure.

They were shining so much more than those tables.

If you stop by Veterans Gardens, you probably couldn’t see what they did. But you’d feel it.

You’d feel it.

You’d feel how wonderful it is to sit in our park and be gently blanketed in this glorious outdoor living room. Where myriad birds are your soundtrack, where squirrels are your court jesters.

Back to those five boys from town.

Here we are all feeling like our city, and our country, and our world are swimming against the current—full of anger, anxiousness and divisiveness.

And here are these boys, getting out of bed on their “day off” to show up.

To show up.

To show up to say we may not be able to clean it all up, but we’re going to make a little bit of a difference right here, right here in our town. In our hometown.

We’re going to make a place as nice as it can be so that people in town can sit here for a moment—and remember to look up. To look up at how lucky, how privileged we are.

Those boys didn’t care about a bunch of picnic tables.

They were scrubbing because those tables meant a whole lot more.

It was their way of saying thank you. To their town. To their family. To their school down the street. To what they believe will blossom for them in their days and lives ahead.

That’s why they were scrubbing. I saw it in their eyes.

An old, weathered gardener once told me that you could only know if soil is rich by digging your hands in the ground and holding up the earth right in your palms. Then you know.

If a crocus could talk, and you told it that it was beautiful—I’ll bet it would tell you this.

I’ll bet it would say that what’s beautiful isn’t what’s sticking out of the snow.

What’s beautiful are the roots that go down deep in the soil—drawing from the richness and the wonder of it all. That’s where its strength lies. That’s where its heart lives.

You just knew these boys had roots. Of loving families. Of a blanket of belonging in their town, and their schools, and their parish or synagogue.

The boys packed up, headed home. I watched them walking away, kicking and shoving and banging into each other like young cubs wrestling to figure it all out.

I looked around our park. It was quiet. I looked up.

I learned a lot from those boys today.

About what will means. What pure means. What wonder means.

Jimmy Dunne is modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter (28 million hit records), screenwriter/producer of hit television series, award-winning author, an entrepreneur—and a Palisadian “Citizen of the Year.” You can reach him at j@jimmydunne.com or jimmydunne.substack.com.