Submitted by David Anderson.
The news this morning – on this National Marshmallow Toasting Day, August 30 – says a 15 percent increase in licenses to hunt and fish in Washington has been proposed.
S’more money.
If there was one thing I looked forward to at the end of a long day with my dad having escaped to – and traipsed about – the forest, clambering laboriously back and forth and up and down switchbacks and bushwhacking our way over and under fallen trees through dense underbrush and other infernal objects that impeded our access to yet another deep dark pool to catch illusive brook trout, it wasn’t toasted marshmallows.
It was hot Jell-O, and stories dad told of days long since gone by.
Of the night, during the war, they had the town surrounded, the escaping enemy very possibly to cross the bridge dad and others were guarding.
Of how he met the gal who would be my mom on a train to Texas, dad ‘escaping’-as-it-were from paratroop-school, dad’s fear of heights prompting his granted transfer, and thus the train ride, and thus my mom.
Of ending up in the 10th Mountain Division – the ski troops – and blitzing about the Italian countryside in his medic jeep with the red cross flag on top, trying to catch escaping chickens for dinner.
Of how proud he was to have served his country at a most crucial time in its history; of the red-white-and-blue; of how blessed we were to call America home.
To rekindle the dying embers of these memories; to reignite – like those evening s’mores – the fire and fervor of patriotism; to reinforce the confidence to face boldly what the future shall be based upon what such boldness caused the past to become, there’s nothing like dads escaping with their sons to those solitary places where those stories can be told.
