July Fourth Family Traditions

When I was a kid, July 4th always meant a trip to visit my grandparents. One reason was that my father's mother, Myrtle, had been born on July 4, 1893 in Christian County, Kentucky. According to her birth certificate, her name had been Myrtia Morgan, but the family generally believed this was just a mistake on the certificate. (Both my original birth certificate and that of my father contained errors in the date of birth, errors fortunately discovered and corrected before creating major problems.) Our trips for the Fourth were a combination act of patriotism and family bonding. My mother's parents lived only a few miles from my father's, and most of their siblings and my cousins lived in the area, too.

My grandparents owned a farm near the small town of Troup in East Texas, and there was a lake large enough for waterskiing. It was perfect for July Fourth, a lake for swimming, fishing and skiing, a farmhouse with lots of shade trees to picnic under, fresh vegetables on the table that had been picked that morning and watermelons and peaches for dessert, also plucked the same day. It was a great gathering, and I usually got my first serious sunburn of the summer. There were a over a dozen cousins there and the appropriate number of aunts and uncles. It was a blast. My father's older brother built a nice lakehouse on the side of the lake opposite the entrance to the property and that became the scene of many family gatherings for more than a decade.

Mama Dodd (as we called her) died on July 6, 1963, when I was thirteen. Today my brother's adult children call my mother Mama Dodd. And their children call my sister-in-law Mama Dodd. The tradition continues.