Memorial Day 2021

 Tomorrow, besides cook-outs and visits with friends, we commemorate all those who died in wars to protect our country and our democracy.

My father served four years in WWII, building bridges for General Patton to drive his tanks across and then blowing those bridges up because they weren't going to retreat.

There was always a Memorial Day dinner in Waiteville, West Virginia, where my Dad grew up. It was an amazing amount of food, cooked country style. The dinner was to support the village cemetery, which held graves of people who died in many wars.

I enjoyed those meals.

I actually like walking around cemeteries looking at grave stones, trying to imagine what those lives might have been like.

My crazy great aunt Arbana, would put small confederate flags on all the Bradley graves and my Uncle Russel, cussing the whole way, would take them off.

Six generations of Bradley's were in that little grave yard.

Including my great-great grandfather and great grandfather who I was named after.

Skipped two generations so I didn't get to be James Gordon Bradley III.

At 3 o'clock tomorrow there is a movement called Taps Across America where musicians--good and bad--are to play taps. Listen wherever you are to see if you hear taps played.

And pause for a moment in your Memorial Day celebration to remember why it is a holiday.

And hope we don't have any more troops in the future to be honored on that day.

Pray for that.