[Critique Group 1] cleora submission august 2020

[sitting.duck at springmail.com]

Inspired by listening to others on the July reader's workshop with theme summer magic

622 words
My Summer Vacation
by c. s. boyd

	The first week of school was a time for everyone to tell about their summer vacation. I kept my head down embarrassed because I didn't have a story about going to one of the many tourist spots in our nation. If I had told about my summer vacation, the teacher would have marked it as unacceptable because it wasn't the kind of story she was expecting.

For me, summer was a time of work and preparation.

After the long winter, there was fence mending and other repairs to be made around our small farm.

We had an orchard made up of one row of apple trees, 2 apricot (my favorite), 2 plumb, 1 red cherry, 1 white cherry, and 2 peach trees. Two white and two purple grape vines grew along the wooden fence that divided the north east corner of the property from the rest of the two and one half acres. Each year we planted a garden of corn, green beans, black-eyed peas, okra, tomatoes, and watermelon. The garden had to be watered, and, when ready,  The vegetables and fruit had to be picked and prepared. We ate a good bit of it and canned the rest to eat during the upcoming fall and winter.

I also churned butter, helped with dressing the chickens my father killed, fed the livestock, and other chores.

I remember laughing at my dog chasing the sprinkler. making apple dumplings, grape jelly, apple and cherry pies, snapping peas, and green beans, canning vegetables, and fruit to store for the fall and winter ahead

There was no money or time for trips to see Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, the Washington Monument, the liberty bell, Disney Land, or any of the other historical and national vacation spots other kids got to visit.

No going to the movies,  watching TV, play at the local swimming pool or sleeping until noon for me. There was work to be done, and  I rose at 6:00am to help get it done.

As a child, I longed to see and do the things the other kids talked about. At first, I thought I would do it as an adult, But, I didn't have the money and didn't have paid vacation. Besides, others my age had already seen all these things. They were into ski trips, and traveling abroad. So, I thought I would do it after I retired. Then, I went blind, so I missed out all round. Oh, I know I've heard blind friends talk about going on vacation and how they love the description people give of the places they go. That's ok for them, but I can hear a description without leaving home, and I've seen pictures. It's not the same as going and seeing it for myself.

Now, we have people who want to remove the monuments to our history. Vacation spots are not safe. The founder may have something objectionable in his past that means what he created has to be torn down. Long established names have to be changed because they could be offensive to someone. I think sports should be banned as well. These institutions are evil. They exploit young black men by promising them a free college education and pay them millions of dollars to get them to play for teams that buy and sell them like meat at the market. This will leave us with no history, therefore, there was no revolutionary war, no slavery, thus, no civil war, and, finally, we make the utopia complete by removing all laws and law enforcement leaving us with 328 million unrelated people living together on the bottom half of the North American continent.