Summertime..  I remember a time when I was 12 years old, and I went on a trip with my Father from Glenwood, Arkansas, where we lived, to Hope, Arkansas, which was known as the best place in the world to buy watermelons.  Oh, I know, Hope is also the birthplace of a person who became President of the United States, but He became governor of Arkansas and then President long after My Father and I went to Hope to get a load of watermelons.  We went in my Father's truck and we returned to Glenwood with a big load of watermelons, which were sold for what I assume was a good profit.  I was just a boy so I didn't know details.  I didn't even know how important details were.  My Father was a man in his mid-fifties.  He knew the importance of details. The next year my family would drive to California in a 1942 Chevy coupe to begin a new life.  I would begin the new life in the ninth grade at Live Oak High School.

I don't remember much about Hope, but I remember being with my Father.  The trip was good. That trip to Hope and then the trip from Glenwood to Live Oak, California, probably imprinted on me the importance of trips... of traveling.  I've been doing a lot of it during my lifetime. I realize now how important details are.  Traveling and doing the schooling and the jobs and having a family and having friends and having to be good enough at something that I would be trusted and hired to do important jobs at important places... all these things taught me the importance of details.  I'm not going to go into it now because I don't want to spoil my day or my readers' day, but something that is terribly wrong with the present administration in the White House is that it seems to be as ignorant as I was as a twelve year old child about the importance of details.

Oh, about the watermelon in the pictures.  Margaret bought it today at the grocery store... It came from Mexico.