May Travels Memories 3 0f ?

This will be our last full day in da burgh' area because we depart for Gettysburg tomorrow, some <200 miles from here on the PA turnpike, aka toll road where as you know we will be consigned to cash lines at the booths along the way.  We are both anxious to see the battlefield and compare it to our Vicksburg experience.  I awoke this morning and recited Lincoln's Gettysburg address which I memorized long ago in school but which is retrieved readily today--"Fourscore and seven years ago Our forefathers brought forth ...." well you can look it up, but it will remain with me forever.  Somewhere along the way the brilliant academicians determined that memorization was no longer a useful skill and today the same brilliance in education and lack there of  brings us a nation of graduates who cannot think, make change, nor do much of anything without their pods, pads, earbugs. Judging from what I get in writing or online from our own family university  graduates (i.e. recently, "the adventure has began.," to which I shudder) but the downward spiral of education  continues.   I suspect soon we will be a nation of lowest level nincompoops who merely graze finger tips over screens, know-naughts, who once would have been considered "slow" will have taken over, oh what happens  once those signals to the screens are dimmed, 1984 we are beyond you now....but I digress.

Yesterday was lunch with Dayna at the new Loafin' Bakery and Cafe right on Leechburg Rd in Lower Burrell, walking distance within uncle's house.  Two local women have fixed up a house and there make home made cookies, scones, brownies, quiche and salads--it is just the kind of place the area needs and I sure do hope they make it.  We were the only ones in there yesterday until a man came in and had a pastry and coffee.  That is not going to pay the cost of staying open, so c'mon locals, support these hometown gals! 

Yesterday was also cemetery day when I decorate and  fix up the graves and although I intended to photo the hillsides, I did not.  Somehow I neglect to take camera along, I suppose because I know there will be another time.  All grass is trimmed from the family markers  on the plots and flowers are in the urns.  Greenwood Cemetery  has no head stones, all the graves are flat bronze markers, for ease of mowing, but when I visit I brush all grass that blows across the markers off; yesterday's wind meant I could hardly keep it off, but at least for a moment all was clear and glistening.   Soon the veterans flags will all be displayed and there are  many here, nearly every male was a veteran.  My sandals were bugging me as I knelt and clipped so I took them off and proceeded along the grass barefooted which rapidly brought memories of my grandma's voice  "Patty, you put your shoes on you're gonna get hookworm!"   Some things stay with us forever....some things we recall when we are back where it all began.  

Today is a grocery store stop and I just might get to Mazzioti's bakery again to load up on great biscotti for the trip.