Here is John Paul and oh my does he have the LOOKS! For sure he looks nothing like his grandpa!!! John Paul, may you have a great day and a wonderful year as you journey on towards being 5.
Well here we are at July 1st and here in Naples we are into summer in a BIG way. The weather shows that daily the temps are 91,93,94 or even higher. AND the humidity is high much of the time as well. Well IF one lives in Naples in the summer you play in the morning and stay in the AC the rest of the day. BUT IF one is in Naples it probably is by choice so do not complain. As for me I would enjoy being back in St. Paul for the summer but the home that Terry has here is much much better for her so we are here for the summer and will make the best of it. I actually have no complaints and one of the great things is there are NO bugs to speak of so things are good.
I will probably go 4 days with no tennis. Terry came home yesterday from the hospital in the morning so I cancelled my tennis and today through Sunday I have none so IF I play on Monday and am terrible I can use the excuse that I have not played for a while!
It looks like Gail's side of the family, the Saunders, are getting together in the cities on a Saturday this month. I suspect some of the kids may go and in an e-mail Allen said they are expecting about 60 people to show up. Any kind of get togethers are few and far between with the covid so many families have not been together for some time. It looks like it is an all Saturday event.
I just need to say a couple of things about the picture of the month. Dave and Marlys were married for just short of 55 years. Of course Marlys could do many things and do them well but I am more in tuned with what Dave could do and that was pretty much everything. He did many things with cars. He learned to play the guitar. He was a master woodworker. Just to prove that here are 2 pictures of the guitar that he made from scratch for me. Notice the thin strips of wood in the first photo. Now you need to be a master to get that done. It is a beautiful work of art and it plays, not by me, wonderfully.
I think he put in something like 300 hours into making it.
Well today is the beginning of July and here is perhaps a typical day in July way way back in 1955 on the farm.
It was still dark in the west bedroom that Dave and I shared but we did hear Mom saying that we had a busy day and we needed to get downstairs for breakfast. We took as long as we dared as we knew what was in store. No, it was not Mom's breakfast that we wanted to avoid but rather it was the days works. As Dave had his usually breakfast food which consisted of cornflakes with fresh milk from our farm Mom was good enough to make me some eggs. Of course they were farm fresh too. As we finished eating Dad said we should get out to the barn and milk as he wanted us to spend the day on the land to the east of the farm picking rocks. I swear that land was a goldmine for rocks. The land we farmed down south, which was uncle Jims, was almost rock free but our land near the farm to the east grew better rocks than grain in my opinion. Anyway we knew what was in store for the day. Of course Dad would not be there to help us pick rocks. He would be doing something at the farm or be doing something with pictures. The day went as well as possible. Dave and I would make a game of rock picking so we kind of made slow work of it. How can a person make picking rocks fun? Well you can look for certain kinds of rocks. You can take smaller ones and see how far you can throw them. You can hang on to the back of the wagon and pretend to ski. Really, there are all kind of ways to make the terrible work fun but there is a price to pay. In a day you probably do half a days work.
Anyway that was our day and as the rock picking came to an end for the day Dave got on the "big bike" and I on the "little bike" and with soap and towel in hand we headed up to the lake which was only a half mile to the north. There had been a west wind most of the day so as we arrived at the lake the first several feet of water was GREEN. Well all one had to do is wade through the green water for maybe 6 or 7 feet and then it was fine! So after a lake bath we headed home in the semi-darkness of evening. We had NO TV so we had the choice of playing some games or going to bed early and talking ourselves to sleep. Really after a day of rock picking the choice was usually to be in bed by 9 or so. As I lay in bed deep in thought I felt I could hardly wait as in a week or two ALL the crop land would have growth and there could be NO more rock picking for the summer. I had not heard the forecast for tomorrow but I was sure the only thing that could save us from another rock picking day was rain. Maybe, just maybe, it would rain and Dad would have something in town to do and Dave and I would be left to ourselves to play ball or throw knives or maybe just climb up on the barn roof and dream of days far away that were filled with things that we never had on the farm. I am not sure those days every came.
So here it is 9:30 and I am sure I can find something useful to do but do I really want to do any work??? Maybe I should just put another pot of FP on and find something interesting to do and avoid the messy kitchen or the clothes that need to be washed!
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