Good evening District 27. After attending mass this morning, I took a long nap. The hot and windy weather we are experiencing today reminds me of the lazy Sunday afternoons on the farm. As kids, during the hot summer months, we would take a nap in the afternoon lying on a sheet placed on the living room floor with the fan blowing on us to put us to sleep. We were allowed to have an ice cream cone when we woke from our nap. My mom would serve up the chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry ice cream on a cone for each of us to lick on. The ice cream came in big 2- or 3-gallon tin cans delivered to the farm by the Schwan’s truck that stopped by our farm every two or three weeks.
Other days, if we behaved and took our nap, we were allowed to go swimming in Yankton’s Memorial Park to swim in the kiddie pool or the big pool if we were old enough.
On other hot Sunday afternoons, my dad and mom would take us to Bow Valley, Nebraska to watch my uncles play baseball against teams from St. Helena, Wynot, Menominee, Fordyce, Hartington, Crofton, and South Yankton. See the posted photo - I am wearing the uniform with the # 5 on the front. It was always a fun afternoon of watching my uncles play baseball and chasing after foul balls to make a dime. Eventually, those dimes would add up and we could buy ourselves a pack of Topps bubble gum baseball cards.
Lastly, my final memory of hot summer days revolved around playing baseball with my older siblings in the north calf pasture with the neighbors. We were able to play baseball once the chores were done for the day and after eating supper (aka dinner) as a family. There were many baseball games played with our neighbors on that “Field of Dreams.” The baseball diamond had a backstop made of chicken wire and a homerun fence made of lath that we used for making temporary corncribs or a snow fence. I remember my older brothers chalking the lines from home to first and third and even had signs along the homerun fence of the distance from home plate. Sadly, there is no photo on record of us playing on that field. The ball games would eventually come to an end once the sun went down and it got dark that we couldn’t see anymore, or the baseball would eventually get lost in the cornfield once someone hit a home run or foul ball. I remember one weekend, my older brothers said I couldn’t play, but they would pay me a penny for every foul ball I retrieved. I remember I broke their bank as they had no more pennies to pay me for all the balls that I chased after.
These childhood memories serve as an example of the wholesome family values that I grew up with on hot summer days. Values that I want to see passed down to a future generation. If elected your state senator, I will do my part to preserve and protect those values that uphold the traditional family. After all, “the family constitute[s] the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom….[and] is an initiation into [the] life [of] society” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2207). Have a good week. God bless.
Comments