Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day is actually May 30, but it is observed as a national holiday on the last the last Monday in May.
Like the 38 million or so Americans who will travel more than 50 miles (80km) this holiday weekend, we took to the highways. We travelled to our destination, Saint Simons Island, which is a 325 mile(about 500km) five and half hour drive-one way-from where we live.

Our holiday celebrations began with a welcome the summer lunch at Corona's, our favorite Mexican restaurant, and we had the entire place to ourselves. Actually,this photo shows only half of the restaurant, but the other half was empty, too.
On Memorial Day (observed), we went to what we call The Farm, about a 2 hour drive northeast of the island. While we were there, Bram learned to drive the tractor, and we rode with him and my father around one part of the farm.


With my mother, we visited the "Boneyard," a dumping ground for animal carcasses, both wild and domestic, for at least 50 years, heard stories about the odd couple who built a modest, though splendidly furnished house in the middle of the woods, their beautiful daughter who was kept inside, privately tutored, and who at 18 was spirited away by a handsome, wealthy stranger. Around the house, its porches now rotting and dilapidated, the flowers still bloom; a camellia, hydrangeas (blue blossoms in this alkaline soil!), a gigantic crepe myrtle draped in Spanish moss and surrounded by bulbs, all planted by the mother of this mysterious girl more than 60 years ago. We looked for the site of one of my mother's childhood home and heard about the babies born there, one who lived, and two more who didn't, and whose little ghosts haunted my grandmother for want of proper burials for the rest of her life. We followed the 60 year old school bus route down dirt roads and listened to my mother's stories of classmates and neighbors as we passed houses or old home sites, open fields or stands of trees. I love to spend this kind of time with her, to hear her stories, to marvel at what an amazing store of observations, feelings, stories, information that one human can be, and see her happy both in and between two worlds at once. Being between two worlds, isn't that a kind of culture shock?