Farmhouse Magic Blog wants to wish everyone a happy Memorial Day. It’s a day when we can sit back and have a nice BBQ.
We, also, might think about what it takes to be brave enough to die for your country and thank all the service men and women who did just that.
If you have been reading Farmhouse Magic Blog, you might know my Dad was a retired Marine. I always put out a US Marine flag to honor his service and memory on Memorial Day.
This small US Marine flag is placed near my front door.
So what type of “hobbies” do Marines have? If you guessed chiseling huge sandstone boulders and rocks to build sturdy stone soil retaining walls and steps then you would have guessed correct.
Our house was located on a shelf on a hill. To keep the soil in place my Dad built huge retaining walls out the available sandstone on the property. To start with he dug deep trenches as a base.
When he had things the way he wanted them, then he would use the cement to hold the rocks in place.
I put out a full-size US flag but I also like to add these smaller US flags near the sidewalk.
To me it seemed he would find the biggest boulders and rocks he could find. Now this wasn’t an easy thing to do. Then he would struggle and struggle to get the large rocks where he wanted them.
One day, he decided to use a heavy chain and a car to pull a particular heavy piece into place. We all stood back, he revved the car up and pulled and pulled. But all of a sudden, that heavy chain broke and went flying towards the car.
It missed hitting the car by a few inches and hit the ground with a heavy thud. After that, it was back to struggling and using metal pry bars to get things into place.
Even in his old age, he was strong as an ox. If you look carefully at this lovely pink iris photograph, you will notice in the far right hand corner, a clothesline made out of heavy telephone-pole like posts. Not sure how he got the top post up or secured it, but it has stood the test of time and years after his death still stands.
I also have no doubt that those sturdy stone walls he built are still holding that ground up. It is just like a Marine to show us how to do the impossible.
Today’s Memorial Day blog is not dedicated to my Dad but, again, to Roxanne Berkley’s brother who died in Vietnam in the battle for Hamburger Hill.