The Antifa Antithesis

I wish you all could have been with us for our July 4 Independence Day celebration; it was a real Antifa Antithesis. Let me explain.

Normally, we do our July 4 celebration at the farm with family, friends, neighbors, watermelon and fireworks over the lake. It’s a tradition we started several years ago and one that I’ve really come to anticipate, especially since it coincides with my birthday on July 5. After all, how many people get to celebrate their birthday with fireworks, right?!

Well, this year, our sons invited us to celebrate the day with them and their neighbors in Kathleen, Ga. Since my wife and I had just returned from two weeks at the cabin in Pa. (which explains my being AWOL from the column/blog for the last two weeks), and I came back with a sprained ankle, we decided letting someone else host the party would be a good idea. It was a great decision!

The party started in mid afternoon at a neighbor’s house with five families and about 20 kids from toddlers to teens. The guys did a cookout while the ladies prepared the rest of the buffet, which included the first of many watermelons from my wife’s garden; it must have weighed 40 lbs. And then a birthday cake for yours truly, the oldest senior there; the kids enjoyed helping me annihilate the cake.

Shortly after we put a hole in the buffet, the party moved to the backyard for a beanbag contest called “cornhole,” then to the front yard for a back flip/summersault display (that my 27-year-old son is paying for today), and then to the backyard again for a wiffleball game, followed by football until dark, and then fireworks.

So what’s so unusual about all that? Here’s my take on it. Before everything got fully underway, the host offered a prayer of thanksgiving that was truly a blessing in and of itself: thanksgiving for the freedom we enjoy here in the USA and all those who have gone before us to make it possible, and of course, for the bountiful food.

But here’s the part that I found to be a real Antifa Antithesis about this whole celebration: There were at least three generations celebrating together, including black and white and Jew and Gentile families having a ball together. And all of them were truly thankful for the USA and the freedom and opportunities it provides to all of us.

The whole day was an antithesis of what we’ve been seeing almost nonstop on TV news for the last several weeks with rioters burning, looting and tearing down statues representing anyone or anything not in line with those who want to replace our constitution with anarchy. It was a real breath of fresh air.

On the way home after all the festivities, my wife and I commented to each other that it reminded us both of our childhood days when we used to decorate our bicycle wheels with red, white and blue crepe paper woven through the spokes of our wheels while we rode in patriotic parades. I hope you got to do some of that too when you were kids. Looking back, I think we seniors grew up in America’s golden years.

But at the end of the day, we had a new hope for America’s future because I believe there are more people who celebrated the July 4 as we did than there were people burning our flag. Let’s hope so!

Thanks for reading All About Seniors … see you next week.

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