Hope you had an enjoyable Memorial weekend. We did.

Friday Kimball and Davis couldn’t get away so I went to the cemetery and decorated graves planning to go back Sunday or Monday with Davis and Kimball. Sunday was crunched for time. On Monday, Davis had the croup so Kimball and I went to Brasher Cemetery where we decorated several graves then back to Sand Ridge so she could see what I had done Friday.

It was comforting to stand at the resting place of great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and remember happy times.

– On Saturday, we drove into Farmer Park in Springfield right on schedule at 9:30 a.m. to meet Adrian and Cain and Casey Collins Crocker, husband, Josh, and their six year old son, Christian, for brunch at the Aviary. Adrian and Cain had driven up the day before from Baton Rouge to visit her long time friend, Casey, and her family.

First a comment about Christian. Nary an objectionable peep out of him. I couldn’t recognize anything for sure on the menu, but they managed to find something that looked like pancakes and syrup that suited Christian just fine.

Cain and I each ordered appetizers that we could barely pronounce then we shared them with the rest of the table.

His looked kinda like potato wedges. Christian didn’t like the looks of the one his dad pulled off the plate for him, but he thought the one his mom selected looked just fine.

The appetizer I ordered came in several deep fried sticks. I found it to be tasty and so did everyone else. After I had eaten mine, Adrian told me it was deep fried lettuce. I asked how she knew that and she said she had seen endive lettuce in the grocery store. OK. My daughter taught be something.

My main course was some kind of sandwich with two eggs that was just a little too sloppy to pick up.

After the brunch (too late for breakfast and too early for lunch), we cruised the big farmer’s market just outside. I was not temped by the gooseberries for $5 a pint or $12 a quart. A happy little man was pounding folk tunes out of his guitar.

The Crockers and Gilfoils got into their rig and we headed home in ours about noon thirty. I drove to Bolivar where we made a pitstop with the rain starting to come down as we went in. It increased to buckets full with small hail by the time we came out. I had been getting sleepy so Kimball drove. I don’t think I have ever seen it rain much harder. The hail stopped but the rain didn’t until just before we got home. I slept like a log during the rain. Kimball had slept on the trip down.

The rain gauge at home registered a half inch.

– Cain always starts early so he and Adrian got back to Red Stick (Baton Rouge) at 6 p.m. Sunday avoiding the Monday traffic. You know that the Red Stick marked the boundary between two Indian tribes.

They had Merle with them but didn’t think he was ready for a nice restaurant. The left him at the Crockers during brunch acting like a teenage pup pestering Orion their 70 pound dog who was trying unsuccessfully to “pin” Merle, kinda like me trying to catch Terry Smith down at church when he was a lot younger and so was I. Now I don’t want to catch him. KL