Memorial Day
It's a holiday and I'm feeling patriotic.
It all started halfway through the afternoon, when I realized it was Memorial Day.
Memorial Day! The unofficial start of summer! When kids get out of school and families take vacations and fish are jumpin' now! I'm a summer kind of a guy, and, moreso, am a guy whose life is thoroughly integrated with American tradition. And I'd almost missed Memorial Day ....
I acted fast. Got on the phone and called a few people ... who could come over? It was time for a cookout.
I realized I didn't exactly have any food around, but I have plenty of lettuce in the fields and a box of Duncan Hines cake mix on the shelf, and that was a start.
T* & S* called back. They were on their way, and they were bringing hamburgers and buns! It was all coming together.
J* came home early, and she had some potatoes.
My intern found a bottle of wine.
It was all coming together.
Folks started showing up, and we all went for a walk around S**'s pond. It seemed like a nice, leisurely thing to do on a holiday. We saw some goldfish and a snake and a coyote.
Back at the farm, we were ready for a cookout!
But the grill was out of propane.
The weedeater had gas, so I weedeated around the old firepit, and we had a blaze a-roarin' in no time. We let the coals simmer down a while, and then started grillin' burgers.
Ah, a summer afternoon in America. There's nothin like it. Kids were running around and katsup was being spread and smoke was getting in everyone's eyes and cake was being eaten and as it got later and the light got softer, I started to think about my days aboard the freight trains. My days when I rode across praries and mountains and through sunny fields of wheat, and looked out a boxcar door at backyards and crossroads and baseball diamonds and factories, and watched the sun get lower and lower in the summer sky until the light got soft and the grass glowed, somewhere outside Marysville, Kansas, or where-ever. And I swiped some more katsup on a hamburger bun, and I couldn't help but think of Fitzgerald. It's toward the end, where Gatsby's made his stab at his dream and failed. It's where Fitzgerald refers to the fresh green breast of the new world, and says that man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood not desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
It all started halfway through the afternoon, when I realized it was Memorial Day.
Memorial Day! The unofficial start of summer! When kids get out of school and families take vacations and fish are jumpin' now! I'm a summer kind of a guy, and, moreso, am a guy whose life is thoroughly integrated with American tradition. And I'd almost missed Memorial Day ....
I acted fast. Got on the phone and called a few people ... who could come over? It was time for a cookout.
I realized I didn't exactly have any food around, but I have plenty of lettuce in the fields and a box of Duncan Hines cake mix on the shelf, and that was a start.
T* & S* called back. They were on their way, and they were bringing hamburgers and buns! It was all coming together.
J* came home early, and she had some potatoes.
My intern found a bottle of wine.
It was all coming together.
Folks started showing up, and we all went for a walk around S**'s pond. It seemed like a nice, leisurely thing to do on a holiday. We saw some goldfish and a snake and a coyote.
Back at the farm, we were ready for a cookout!
But the grill was out of propane.
The weedeater had gas, so I weedeated around the old firepit, and we had a blaze a-roarin' in no time. We let the coals simmer down a while, and then started grillin' burgers.
Ah, a summer afternoon in America. There's nothin like it. Kids were running around and katsup was being spread and smoke was getting in everyone's eyes and cake was being eaten and as it got later and the light got softer, I started to think about my days aboard the freight trains. My days when I rode across praries and mountains and through sunny fields of wheat, and looked out a boxcar door at backyards and crossroads and baseball diamonds and factories, and watched the sun get lower and lower in the summer sky until the light got soft and the grass glowed, somewhere outside Marysville, Kansas, or where-ever. And I swiped some more katsup on a hamburger bun, and I couldn't help but think of Fitzgerald. It's toward the end, where Gatsby's made his stab at his dream and failed. It's where Fitzgerald refers to the fresh green breast of the new world, and says that man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood not desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
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