A Veteran's Day Memory

 

Norman Rockwell Nostalgia

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day.  I have written about Veteran's Day on November 11, 2018:  The End of the Great War: 100 Years.

I am going to write about it again today, but from a childhood memory of a Veteran’s Day over 50 years ago.  This memory was jogged when my wife asked me today if I had Veteran’s Day off.  I replied, “I haven’t had Veteran’s Day off since I was in the Detroit Public Schools.  In fact, even then we went to school in the morning and had only the afternoon.  It always seemed like a lesser holiday because we only had a half-day off.”

I do not remember what I did on most of those Veteran’s Day half-day holidays.  One however stands out in my mind.  And I thought of it when I went outside today to barbecue some lamb chops for dinner.  It was 60 degrees, shirt sleeve or light jacket weather.  I was thinking it was November 10^th and we haven’t had a really cold day yet.  We haven’t had a first frost yet.  This was Indian Summer weather, but it couldn’t be an Indian Summer day, officialy, until we had a first killing frost.

It brought to mind a Veteran’s Day when I was either in 7^th or 8^th grade.  I want to say it was 7^th grade, my last year at Burns Elementary School.  When school let out at noon, it was a glorious Indian Summer day.  The temperature must have been in the 60s if not the 70s.  The sky was beautiful Autumn blue.  A group of us decided to meet up at Cooley High School and play some touch football. 

It was an innocent time.  We were young, energetic, and optimistic.  It was before the Detroit Riots in 1967 and the other civil unrest that defined the late 1960s.  We played on Cooley’s football field and felt much older than our 14-year-old selves.  We had a great time as can only be had in a pick-up game.

It was fun until about 3 pm when the wind picked up bringing with it a cold front.  Dark gray clouds rolled in on the wind.  There was a rapid drop in temperature.  It was like 70 degrees on minute, and it was a very cold 45 degrees in a matter of minutes.  The colder it got, the stronger the wind blew.  We were all dressed for the warmer weather.  No one had a coat or even a sweatshirt.  Our game ended on account that we were all freezing our butts off.  We jumped on our bikes and hightailed it for home.

Winter instantly took over that afternoon and didn’t loosen its grip until March. 

Being 2024 and having the full power of the internet at my disposal.  I searched the weather websites to see how high the temperature was that day and how quickly it cooled off.  The weather graph for that day showed nothing like what was etched in my memory.  Maybe I had the year wrong, so I ended up looking at every Veteran’s Day in the 1960s and still… nothing like I remembered.  Over time have I exaggerated the memories of that day to make for a better story?  Perhaps.  But truly, I remember that beautiful day until Winter thrust itself on us and stayed until March.

It also made me think of how the weather had changed in the past sixty years.  

It made me think of how the ‘climate’ has changed in so many ways in our country.