implosion

 

Friday, July 1 opens the Fourth of July Weekend, which should be four days off for everyone, but probably isn't. We retires can fashion a four-day weekend anytime we choose, and it doesn't have to include a Saturday/Sunday. Could be a nice Tuesday - Thursday when motel rates are lowest. What would I do with a four-day weekend? Either staycation right here in 7H, or go to Apalachicola, or stay right here. 

Why keep mentioning Apalachicola? IDK, it's been part of my soul since right after WW2, when I was nine years old and going there with my father in his seafood business. Apalachicola is a "sand in your shoes" place of the heart, once you've been there you can't shake it, there's no not going back.

Memory of the Weekend: driving down and parking at Battery Park in granddaddy's big green truck to watch the fireworks with Nicholas. His ears were so sensitive to the explosions that we had to give it up.

"This land is my land, This land is your land" lived, what?, 240 years before the free-fall became irreversible? The flag still raises goosebumps, but "one nation, indivisible" is cause for grief. A way to avoid taking up arms against each other might be to begin Now a plan for peaceful division into two or more independent states. Or yesterday. 

How long, another decade or four score and seven years before an author follows William Shirer with another "Decline and Fall" bestseller?

What happened? It isn't the Goths this time, or the Allied Powers, it's my folks walking down to the beach in front of The Old Place to watch the Dixie-Sherman implode into a cloud of dust. 

April 1970, we were stationed in San Diego, my ship was at sea, returning from WestPac and the Vietnam War. My mother wrote me about the Dixie-Sherman, that they had walked down front to watch it fall. When we returned Home the summer of 1971 on PCS it was gone.

Nothing stands forever, does it.