As a post-celebration of Memorial Day, here is a bit of history from my dear Great Uncle Willie. Take from it what you will.

"My early childhood was passed in ignorance of Memorial Day. I first learned of Decoration Day, as it was then called, in 1935 after I moved to Washington. I remember seeing people with bunches of flowers, headed to the cemeteries to decorate graves.

I did not learn of Confederate Memorial Day until I worked in Southern's Payroll Dept. in 1950. I learned that the Southern States could not agree on which day to honor their dead heroes, so the paid holiday was observed on different days in different states. Lakeland was founded by southerners and most of those who moved there were southerners. It is odd that any observance was so quiet that I had never heard of it.

I learned that Florida did observe one Confederate date while I worked for Kress in Lakeland in 1943. I was in a drugstore (Liggett's?) for lunch on June 3 when I overheard the following conversation.

Male - The bank was closed.
Female - Why?
Male - Today is a holiday.
Female - What holiday?
Male - It is the birthday of Jefferson Davis.
Female - Who the Hell was Jefferson Davis?

We did have one Yankee teacher at Lake Morton School who made the mistake of playing Marching Through Georgia for us to enter school by. That was the only time I ever heard the hated music. The teacher was not fired, but she never played that march for us again.

Wikipedia has articles about Memorial Day, and Confederate Memorial Day. There is a note on the latter, "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed." According to it, Florida observed April 26. I was unaware of it in my childhood.

I question the common sense of spending over a billion dollars for the Mars Lander, particularly since the billion is borrowed money. Compared to the waste in Iraq, one billion is peanuts, of course.

I wrote Jason to tell him that Jody wishes to have lunch with the crowd on the 28th.

I sent birthday greetings to Christina.

No word from Muriel.

I walked. I ran the washing machine and drier. I was so tired by putting the sheets on my bed that I took a nap afterwards.

Love to all,

Will / Uncle Willie"