I, like many of you, am filled with angst and frustration. I want to celebrate 250 years of this amazing country. I want to feel the freedom of living in the most accepting country in the world and I want to feel like the future is so bright that I still gotta wear shades. However, daily, I am beaten with a barrage of stupidity the likes of which we have never seen. Billionaires and trillionaires coming for this country through greed and fear wanting to control and build AI centers will litter thousands and thousands of acres of our country and disrupt the entire planet to the point of destruction, and you and I? Well we just take it. That’s only one thing. On a local level, I have a friend who has been yelling about his water for 5 years now. My city has kicked the can in an elitist way to avoid repairing a huge drinking water problem only to fund a river project the people voted down twice. It’s the abuse of power that has me so rattled and since I’m in the county I can’t run or vote. Ugh.

But it’s the Fourth of July and I should be focusing on the barbecue and the swimming. But I’m not. My mind is in the north shore cabin area in 1985. I got my little sailboat, the sleeping porch and a good sunburn. I got my smokes, my Meister Brau, my tunes and my Fort Benk family. The smell of coffee and cigarettes becomes secondary to the sauce Suzie is mixing up for the brisket that will slow cook all day, and I hear the screen door slam as the old jeep fires up to head down to the dock. I close my eyes and I can hear everything. I can feel my feet on the indoor outdoor carpet as I shut the metal door of the porch. I walk past the unused wood stove and bookshelves covered in treasures including half clam shells from summers past. The concrete shower floor feels warm on my feet but that water pressure is likely to peel my skin off! It has a familiar smell that is Zest and Flex. The smell of an amazing day. Jean shorts and a t shirt and we all know where we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do. This surely isn’t our first Fourth!

Trash gets picked up, beds made and do what you’re asked the first time, then we play! The Fourth at the lake was different. It was bigger than Christmas and everyone knew that the grand finale would be bigger than the year before. Ear protection was non existent, so prepare for the ringing that might last a couple days! We waited the entire year for this party! No one, absolutely no one loved this holiday more than Wm. S. Benkelman. The smile started from the moment his feet hit the floor until long after the last cracker popped. A cold Coors gold and good friends, or maybe a cold Coors gold was a good friend? Yep. A boat ride in the Ebbtide, a line in the water and then to string the tree with 300,000 crackers. Nothing like it. The days were easy. The conversation was the best and a Rummy that lasted over 30 years is now silent.

Death has silenced the slow down of a life that was absolutely magical. There were no rules particularly, but we didn’t need them. We didn’t hurt anyone and we were self sufficient. We knew that the door was open and when to have our asses home. We would sneak out for skunk hunts and they knew because it’s a porch and guns firing in night with the roar of the old blue jeep was a dead giveaway! But we were doing community service! Yeah. …

Where am I going with this…? Well. I guess it’s about lessons. I learned that I wish time would have frozen. That I could have a coffee and a smoke and a long game of Rummy. That white cotton nighties are cool in the summer, that newspaper is better than phone to consume news, that every time you are together should be a slow down celebration, but reality now says “no” there is no slow down. I learned that the habits and coping mechanisms we use are not all bad, that even though it caused issues for me later on that in the moment I was learning big things. I’m not sorry about that. I learned that love looks different in every situation. You can love someone and be frustrated with them, you can love someone and still wish they loved themselves and just move on like it is because it really isn’t as bad as you might think! Once it’s gone it’s gone. I learned that time gives perspective and perspective is relative to age. I learned the importance of cheese and crackers with a few roasted peanuts, I learned that loss is forever. That tears will never dry and the nostalgia and love I feel will last my lifetime. What a gift.

Today, the best I can do is try to honor that memory. To create a memory. To slow it down for a few hours. To make the salad, can’t do that brisket justice no matter how I’ve tried, and I can tell the stories. There are plenty to tell.

I’m going to be on the north shore. My mind will stay in the sound of the cottonwood and the dry breeze, the smell of the burning prairie and the smell of Coppertone on my skin. I will listen for their laughter. I will picture their faces and I will be forever, forever indebted to two people who loved me like the devil. It was well beyond mutual. To B and J….you are still stuck with me.

Until then chickens, Make a memory.

E