Yes, it’s Memorial Day weekend here in the good old USofA, when we remember those who served out country by going to sales and eating a lot. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Personally I am going to take it easy and try not to do much of anything. For those of you who have been following the remodeling follies, this month has been The Month of the Roof. or as I like to call it “well, at least nobody was killed.” After all, nobody was in the living room when the crane operator dropped a pallet through the ceiling and the flashing left off (and inspected and passed by the city as weather-tight) only caused a quarter of the building to be uninhabitable for a few weeks while th men in the white suits came to remediate the walls.
Note to roofers: looking blankly and stating “this never happened before” isn’t what one wants to hear under these circumstances. “Our insurance will take care of everything and that white Benz roadster at the curb is yours because of all the trouble, and did I tell you how thin you look these days?” is more like it.
So anyway, I plan on doing some sniffing, having a burger or two and maybe taking a ride to the beach. How are you going to spend your holiday if you’re getting one? Let us know in the comments.
Image: Internets
As a daughter, granddaughter, wife, and mother of American military veterans, I avoid sales on this particular weekend (although I assure everyone that sales normally excite my enthusiastic participation). This particular weekend will be spent with one heavily bandaged ankle propped up on pillows and a knee scooter by my side; a triple ankle fusion to repair damage done by rheumatoid arthritis is officially Not Fun. Hope you all will find more entertaining things to do – and also hope you remember that we are the land of the free because of the brave.
Oh, I am sorry to read that!
I did finally see something on the news about an event being held to honor the fallen, and and even nicer one about a teacher who was asking her kids to write to people serving now over the weekend.
I wish more people would do that.
I’m taking my kids to the veterans cemetery for the Memorial Day services, both of my parents are buried there. I take them regularly and have since they were born. Sometimes we even take a picnic lunch. My friends think I am weird, but their kids are growing up actually knowing family members and I have none left. I want my children to feel comfortable there, that a cemetery is not always a place of sorrow. It gives me a chance to talk with my kids, focusing only on my parents and the history of my family, I feel that it somehow creates a connection for them to our past.
Ahh Julia. You are a very kind woman. Thank you for tending those graves…
Thanks Julia-
I used the term that the Disabled American Veterans site used: “served.”
Sadly I think that if you asked most people even in “flyover country” (a term I loathe) would have no idea exactly what Memorial day was memorializing, but are more interested in hitting the road before the traffic gets bad. Everything I see is about what sale is going on or how much the traffic is going to be or stories about lines at the airport. I’d be much happier if they had to report on the traffic jams of people trying to get into the VA cemetery to decorate the graves of soldiers who’s families have passed on or cannot be there, and spent the Tuesday after visiting some living, needy vets with some much needed support, thanks and companionship. Or maybe even, crazy person that I am, demanding of our government that it actually keep the promises to those who served their country to deliver on the “guarantees” of payment, healthcare and economic protections they have not received.
I think that would be nicer than worrying about being first in line at the Memorial Day Mattress Frenzy, but that’s just my opinion.
I will definitely be stealing your ” worrying about being first in line at the Memorial Day Mattress Frenzy” line!
We remember those who served our country on Veteran’s Day.
On Memorial Day, we will honor those who died for our country.
Us bumpkins here in flyover country have ceremonies at just about every cemetery. Tomorrow we will tidy up the burial grounds ( if we didn’t last weekend) Sunday we will honor the fallen in our own families, and Monday there will be more formal ceremonies to pay our respects to everyone who has died to preserve our freedom.
In the little rural cemetery down the road from me, we have graves going back to before the Civil War and we take special care of two graves, marked simply Union soldier, James, 1863 and Union Soldier, Henry 1863. There were no battles fought anywhere near here in 1863, and no one has ever been able to figure out how they came to be here. We all wish there was a way we could let their families know they are being tended to and honored.
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I’d like to add that if there are any historians or Civil War buffs who are familiar with how to research soldiers from that era, I would be so grateful for any ideas on how to find out who these boys are. This is deep Confederate territory and very rural; it seems almost impossible that they would be here. It has always been assumed that they were very young, since the old folks around here always refer to them as the little Yankee boys. We don’t even know if those are their first names or their surnames. There’s an even smaller cemetery about an hour west of here that has a similar grave with the name of Thomas on it. Very intriguing, and so sad to think of them lying so far from home.