A friend at church sent me a note with the attached story. I asked her if I could share some of it on Daily Kos, and after checking with her brother she said it would be okay. I've edited it a bit for length, but the rest of it is as he wrote it.
I've been coming to the beach for 50 or so years on the northern gulf coast. It has been and is a big part of my life. I remember as a boy of about 7 or 8 years, my daddy loading the five of us up in his little VW bug at 3:30 am and beginning our trek from North Alabama to Panama City Beach, Florida on our one and only vacation every year. My father was an avid gardener. Not a therapy garden but a "food on the table" garden. He always made me work it too, trying to teach me the value of hard work and what it took to raise food, I guess. I never cared much for it but you didn’t cross this Marine Corp WW II and Korean War vet. One year he decided we had to work the garden to perfection before we could leave on our beach trip. He and I were out there sweating profusely when he stopped and leaned on that hoe handle. I looked at him and he threw down that hoe and said "Let’s go to the beach." We left the hoe lying in the garden and left right then.
More below the fold ...
