Love Me A Car Show...Even A Small One

 Last weekend we celebrated Hay Days, it's our local community's summer celebration, We've only been here a few years, but we already know that Hay Days means several things:

A free breakfast

Local vendors

Activities for the kids

Baby Beauty Contest

And a car show.

We love the car show.

It's not the biggest car show around. In Cache County next door they have a car show around Independence Day. It's great...big and great. The car show at Hay Days is smaller, but there are some beautiful vehicles. Antique trucks, cars, even some motorcycles. This year a family brought two dragsters and a funny car.

The 2015 Corvette isn't an antique, but it's a beautiful car. We know the owners--that's always fun. They've shown their car several times over the past couple of years.

Seeing these cars causes a stir in me. I'd love to have a car at the show. Back in the day, after my cousin painted my '72 VW beetle, that might have qualified. It had issues, of course, but it was a good looking car. A few years ago a kid brought a couple of VWs to the Hay Days show. He hasn't been back since.

Yes, car shows are fun, and you have to put in a lot of time, effort, and money to have a car show-worthy car. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that...

Maybe one day.

Give Thanks...Community

 The fireworks began as we loaded up the cars. And because of that, we ended up pulling off the side of 1000 North to watch instead of going to the hospital parking lot where we usually go. Not a big deal...we were only a few hundred feet farther away from the evening explosions in the summer air.

Though, not the state's largest firework display, it did what it was intended to do...entertain, and hopefully fill those watching with a sense of wonder, of awe...

Of community.

Across the street from where we parked there's an open field. Last night it was full of cars and trucks (lots of trucks...). There's a good chance I didn't know a single soul in those vehicles, and they didn't know us. Didn't matter. Just like all of us found ourselves in this little down a few miles from the Idaho border, we all came--or have stayed--for different reasons, we all gathered around the fairgrounds, watching bombs bursting in air.

Thankfully, if we needed help last night, to borrow a phone or to jump-start a dead battery, I feel I could have approached any of those cars and/or trucks and asked for help and they would have obliged. Just as we would have helped anyone coming to us. At least, that's how I felt last night. That's how I feel living in this community.

Because negativity sells, it's easy to believe everyone is evil, everyone is just out for themselves, and at times each of us feels that way. But, I'm thankful that people are more often than not, better, good, giving, caring, loving.

I'm glad we don't have fireworks every night...it would become commonplace, ordinary. The infrequency makes it special, memorable, an event. I'm thankful for our community and for millions of other communities around the world. I'm thankful we got to see the show.

And the brilliant full moon only made it that much better.

Turns Out...We Just Needed A Taller Flag Pole

 Last month we were given a gift...a US flag to fly in front of our house. Now, we already had a flag. I made it a few years ago from a steel pole and an inexpensive flag that came in a kit, the kind of kit you mount on your wall.

I tossed the pole that came with the kit and just used the flag.

The flag my mom-in-law gave us had a taller pole, taller than ours. We received it because the wind blew her flag over and we have a somewhat sheltered location for our flag...away from direct winds.

I'm glad for the gift. For one reason, we couldn't see the flag out of our front window because it was too short and the lower flag used to hit people in the face when they visited. Maybe that's why we have so few visitors, but on the plus side--door-to-door salespeople. 

I set up the flag and even though it's not in a windy location, the PVC pipe swayed a lot in the wind. Solution--put the metal pole I used inside the pipe. Problem solved.

Today was the first time I flew my Franken-flag. It worked well. Turns out we just needed a taller flag pole.