The Way We Were Thursday this week: Independence Day!

Treason Day, as my great-grandmother once referred to it, was never the same after my father's sister Edith married Dick.  Uncle Dick had a house on a nice lake about 30 miles north of Detroit. And the house on the lake became the venue for summer holidays, like the 4th of July.  He bought a house on a lake, because he had a boat.  He had a boat because his mother's next-door neighbor had a boat she didn't know what to do with, so he bought it.  His mother's neighbor had a boat she didn't know what to do with, because she won it on the "Price is Right" in the very early 1960's. So really our Independence Day holidays were celebrated on a lake, because Dick's mother's neighbor won a boat on a television game show.  Dick's entire life was a long series of complicated cause and effect stories.  He was a colorful character and a master storyteller, and could spin a tale like few I have ever met.  

My mother was an only child, my father only had the one sibling.  But I lucked out in the Aunt and Uncle department.  Edith and Dick were fun and interesting.  They enjoyed life.  If you had a couple of hours he could tell you about the time they drove a motorhome from Florida to the Arctic Circle and back with seven adults, and aged cat and a 90 pound dog (the cat died fat and happy on the way home.) The two of them made in quality, what we lacked in quantity.  

Oh, that is me, in the front row, the expression on my sister's face is priceless.  

Happy Independence Day!