My July

 July is my favorite month every year. Maybe because my birthday is in July. Definitely because my school isn't in session in July.  The old June, July and august summer has seen school encroaching well into mid June and starting again Mid August but my July is still family time, outdoor time, ME time.

 This year my husband started a new job, and so did both of my adult sons.  My granddaughter and I have had the long summer weekdays to explore together, taking her to swimming lessons and the beach, to soccer and the local aquarium and the almost local zoo. it hasn't been too smoke filled or too foggy unlike some summers and the home area is cool but just up the river it is hot and swimmable

 imagination rules at four so we have been Maleficent and her daughter Mal, or a Doctor and Patient, or a wide variety of monsters and princesses and super heroes

Great Uncle Carl Beightol

Even though he was missing since dying in a POW camp in 1942, my great uncle Carl does have a headstone in the Brookville Illinois Methodist Cemetery near his mother and father, Della McPherson Beightol and William Beightol.  Carl is on the memorial of the pacific in Manila in the Philippines. He has never been forgotten and although I was born 21 years after he died his memory has been there in pictures on the wall and in family stories and a sadness in my great grandmother who lived to be 98 and was very much a part of my childhood. I totally remember Grandma Della telling me she still stood out on the front porch and thought she saw him walking down the gravel driveway coming home. I think he should be returned to where she is but I don’t think I should get the final vote which ultimately I believe should go to the surviving children of his siblings, my mom and her cousins.

My Brother got a call, after all these years, Great Grandma Della’s prayers have been answered and the Army thinks it has located Grace and Clara’s brother Carl. He told them to call me with their offer of a funeral so a lady with the Army called me and is looking for DNA confirmation as the inmates of the POW camp had to be buried in large groups and some had their dog tags placed in their mouths but most didn’t. She wanted a female relative in direct female to female lineage to Carl's Mother, and a Male relative in direct male to male descent from his Father.

Once, while digging into old cartons of family pictures,  I posted a picture of Carl on facebook, I mentioned that my Great Grandma had told me she had been visited in the late forties by a soldier who had survived the Death march, and told her that the last time he saw Carl, he was too exhausted to keep walking and had slumped against a tree. He said he had seen a Japanese soldier coming up behind Carl, but then had to look away and keep trudging on. I had mistakenly taken that to mean that Carl was missing from during the actual march but I was wrong and My Mom's cousin, Donald Slack commented this "Carl came to Wyoming to be a cowboy but, after riding his horse into the Silver Dollar Bar in Cody, the Sheriff gave him the alternatives of going to jail or joining the army. He joined the army and died in the Bataan Death March in 1942... my middle name Carl is in his honor.

Dixie, actually, he survived the march but died of dysentery in the Cabanatuan POW camp not long after. We have a copy of a letter from his sergeant sent to "William Beightol" in 1974 saying that he had held Carl in in arms when he died, June 1942. Marion and I visited the site of the POW camp in 1972 and also saw Carl's name on the Memorial of the Pacific War in Manila."


So anyway, maybe Carl is finally coming home.  The idea brings tears to my eyes. I wish his parents could have seen this.  You'd think 76 years after his death that it would no longer matter, but when kids are separated from their family and answers fail to come it created a void that all the time between then and now has never filled.  There is a lesson there still valid today.

A Zoo Day in Eureka, CA

I have been seeing Vampire Penguin, Eureka on my Facebook feed for quite some time, and it made me think of how often my friend from down near New Orleans mentions snowcones with condensed milk on them, but I’ve never seen anything like that here. My grandma used to give me a spoon of condensed milk, so it’s always been a treat associated with being loved, but since this dessert shop is 90 miles away it took me awhile to get there. I finally told my family, I wanted the Eureka Zoo and Vampire Penguin for my birthday. The snowy (not crushed ice) desserts were perfect, the price kept it from being something you’d drop in for on a daily basis. With four snows, all smalls, one smoothie, one cookie and a bottled Sprite we were at $40. The few things I think could improve the experience would be the addition of a mini or child sized for maybe three dollars. Also it would pair so well with a hot coffee or hot tea to prevent brain freeze and there were no hot drinks.

 I love Otters, and the Zoo has a fun set up where the otters crawl and up on rocks and swim next to a crawl through tunnel large enough my four year old granddaughter could walk through it. The Zoo has changed so much since I took my sons there 20 years ago. and we went regularly for a few years, I felt like I knew the place, but There were only a few corners I recognized. Gone are the Chimps and the Golden Lion Tamarin, the Crowned cranes and Roosevelt Elk. Added in is a barnyard with a petting zoo. Bush Dogs were there where black bear had been. There were no sign of the prairie dog colony or the wallabies but there was a lot of hands on ecological areas where kids could build with logs and pump with a hand water pump and touch skulls and footprints of local critters.

 And still, next to the zoo, the Sequoia Park is an amazing place for kids to run and climb and families to picnic and relax.