These days it is difficult to get me to leave the “protection” of my Maine camp compound. But yesterday I ventured, albeit reluctantly, beyond the pines and comparative coolness of the recent, bonafide heatwave, to attend a family (wife’s side) classic Fourth of July gathering, cookout, and water events on the lake. The entire day, with the exception of once realizing I didn’t have any idea where I was supposed to go to find the lake “camp,” reminded me of events as a child, even those very rare occasions of being at a clean fresh-water lake, baking in mostly uncommonly hot (into the 90s) Maine weather, eating hot dogs, cheeseburgers, chicken and ribs cooked on the grill, sipping lemonade, and watching boats of all sizes on the water and the young children completely ecstatic frolicking in the water, splashing, screaming, laughing with hardly a care.

Perhaps the one thing that really drove home to me how perfectly classic this day at the lake with family transpired, was the fact that my ears, not even once, heard the sound of political badgering and/or commentary from any of the estimated 4o or so family and friends gathered. It was exquisite to be void of the nasty, rotten, hate-filled, biased, brainwashed ragging of anyone wishing to express their political verbal sewerage. Instead, the talk was of historic family stories, hunting, fishing, the children, the weather… all of those things once taught and learned like “never talk about sex, religion, and politics.”

For a brief moment in this modern, progressive society, I entertained thoughts that maybe there was hope for a return to how things used to be.

Realty does come crashing down sometimes.