This Memorial Day has got ….
This Memorial Day has got me totally confused. Did I read that there is an early copy deadline? Or was that just for ads? I guess I won’t take any chances and get at my column. That way I’ll have a couple days off next week. Kind of an unpaid holiday.
The other confusing part came when I looked up Memorial Day on Facebook. It said it was not to honor veterans, but only those who died fighting for our country. So why, I wondered, are all the graves in the cemeteries marked with flags? The more I read about how Memorial Day came to be and how many different ways different states have found to observe the day, I finally settled on one thing, I’ll plan to be at the cemetery Monday morning to join in the observance.
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I do have one thing to check out. When I moved out, one of the things left was the flag that had been given to my Mother at the funeral for my brother Ernest. He had been killed while on duty as a Military Policeman at the Pine Bluff, Arkansas Arsenal where poison gas was manufactured on Christmas Eve morning in 1943. Along with that was a large wooden box that had been used by the Military Police at Pine Bluff to ship all of Ernest’s personal belongings home. It somehow got saved and my brother Harold took it along to his apartment in Cumberland when he sold the farm.
It sat in our garage after he passed away and Florence had told me a couple times to get rid of it, but I just never, or couldn’t do it. So now, thanks to Jackie, it will be on display at The Highground.
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Since I wrote last week, there was a major event taking place. It was my birthday on the 22nd and I say major because we began celebrating already on the Friday night before.
Some of the family, along with “doctor” Glen and Pat Bennett, gathered at the Highview northwest of Medford. It is one of my favorite places but it is hard to explain why I haven’t been back since Florence and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary there in 2006.
It seemed so much fun to celebrate so Sue and her husband Mark, along with Sue’s son John and his wife Breanna from Menomonee Falls, as well as Jackie, gathered at the Winery north of Withee for the second day of celebrating. It was a new experience to me and I have yet to believe we have such a neat place right here in Clark County.
It wouldn’t be until the next day before I officially turned 92 and I’ll stay there until late November when I can say “I’m going on 93”.
Just so you know, on Friday evening when they were cutting the cake, someone said I had to make a wish. So I said, “Eight more”.
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My weekly trips to Loyal are always pleasant. A few fields of grain are up enough so the field is green again.
The early spring flowers are done, but the next batch are blooming and I checked Savanna’s flowering crabs and they were beautiful. I just hope the rain last Wednesday and Thursday might not have wrecked them.
I kind of miss not planting any flowers, even if last year I think it was just seven pots I filled. Just so you think I’m without flowers, I have my May Day flowers full of blossoms. As I tell people, life doesn’t get much better.
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As long as I’m bragging up the place, I might just as well tell you another story. Back in our traveling days we ate lots of breakfasts on the road. I told the family I always judged the restaurant on how good it was on the jellies. If they had blackberry jelly, that was top of the line. Well a few days ago my toast came and with it a little kit of jelly. Yup, blackberry.
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Thursday afternoon they had a little get together for all the veterans living here. I guess by the time they got everyone together, that was at least 15 of us. It was a little amusing to hear a couple of guys talking about their military service. They were both in their mid 80s so their service came a bit after mine.
I was still 20 when I entered the Army in March 1951. Wisconsin had an 18-yearold beer drinking law, but in California the law was 21. It just happened on the day I turned 21 we were still in basic training and quarantined to our barracks. So I couldn’t even go to the PX for a beer. Back home the shorty beers were popular and cost 15 cents a bottle.
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I don’t know if I want to write anything about the latest tragedy in Texas or not. At least I hope there won’t be another one before this gets into print. It seems they are happening on a pretty regular basis and television news programs are filled with pictures of police cars and flashing lights.
If you talk anything negative about the shootings, someone is surely going to bring up the Second Amendment rights.
Seems to me that is a bit outdated. Written in 1791, long before auto firing guns and assault rifles were even thought of.
You would think with all the talk about killing and efforts to put a stop to it there would be an effort to cut down on the sale of guns. If I recall correctly it wasn’t that long ago a couple of our local service organizations were involved with sponsoring and hosting a “gun show”. I suppose the answer to that is that everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?
What seems so strange to me is I would think everyone should be opposed to all the killings, so why is it so hard to just pass a law making them illegal?
