By Lonnie Cruse
This weekend our country celebrates its annual birthday. Picnics, fireworks, swimming parties, you name it. Much of the country will be busy and noisy with celebrations. I'm hoping to attend an annual family reunion, but recent gall bladder surgery may sideline me. Not much keeps me away from a table full of food, so there is still hope.
Back to America and celebrations. I watch a lot of HGTV and I like House Hunters International where people sometimes buy 1400 to 1700 year old buildings and try to refurbish them. WHAT a task. Most buildings in this country can't claim to be as much as three hundred years old. We are young, compared to most of the other countries, and in many ways we are as bright and bouncy and immature as a teenager waiting for a driver's license. We do things wrong. We do things right. We simply do things.
When you read some of our country's past history, you find that people were as pessimistic and as optimistic about our country's future back then as we sometimes are today. Where are we going? What are we doing? I dunno. I worry a bit sometimes because we have grandchildren and I want them to enjoy the same freedoms we always have. But overall, I'm optimistic.
This weekend, may you have all the hot dogs and homemade ice cream and ice cold lemonade your stomach can hold, may you "oohhh" and "aahhh" over the best fireworks you've ever seen, and if you think we have it bad here, take a look at some of the third world countries. And like they say, if you can read this, thank a teacher, and if you are free to read it and have an opinion about it, thank a soldier, either modern day or historical. They all fought for the same thing. Freedom.
God bless America, and God bless us all. And don't get burned by a sparkler. (Thanks to this website: http://hubpages.com/hub/Free-Clip-Art-4th-of-July for the clipart!)