| Friend’s great idea leads to longtime family tradition |
|
By: Jeanne Bragg
|
Posted: Thursday, October 16, 2008 2:28 pm
|
 Email  Print
|
Jeanne Bragg
|
|
|
When your “baby” of three turns 27, I guess you have to admit that you're old.
Birthdays are always big at our house, and when we planned what we would do for John this year, nothing came to mind. He has recently moved back from Austin, Texas where many of his friends still reside. Most of his college friends live out of town, so only Beth and Alex, his sister and brother-in-law, were around to make a to-do over his birthday.
When he was very young it seemed like John’s birthday was always on a weekend.
Tommy was in the Air National Guard, and since the Guard met the first weekend of the month “or he was running the printing company and working so hard.” he was never around to plan a party and barely got home in time to attend one.
When John was about 5, we lived in a house around the corner, two doors down from the Gary Middleton family.
Gary kept an impeccable yard, and it seemed every Saturday he was on his lawn mower doing his weekly ritual.
We all had really big yards that backed up to the Stones River, and on one of John’s birthday weekends when Tommy was at Guard drill, Gary and his son Ty gathered up sticks and stumps from their yard and the river bank, put them in the cart on the back of their riding lawnmower and drove them down to our house for a birthday bonfire.
Voila. Out of nothing came a fabulous idea for a birthday party!
By word of mouth, the Middletons and Braggs invited all the neighbors that night for a cookout for John. A surprise was waiting for Tommy by the time he got home.
We hosted a wiener roast, complete with chiseled off sticks for roasting hot dogs, homemade baked beans and potato chips ... and of course, s’mores. And the first of annual John’s birthday bonfires was born.
The weather was way cooler back then. I don’t remember one single birthday when we didn’t have to huddle around the fire to get warmer or wear heavy sweatshirts and blue jeans to ward off the cold. If the conditions had been the same as they were this year, I wondered if we could have stood the heat from a roaring fire.
But back then, a bonfire was just the ticket for fall. And it was so much fun on its inaugural year that we followed the tradition for many years to come ... until John left for college.
Nobody had a bonfire on their birthday then.
The guest list hardly varied from year to year, It included mostly neighbors and some classmates: the Beasley clan (Jason, Marcie and Jessie), Ty Middleton, Bo Martindale, Jordan and Kyle Allen, John’s schoolmates Seth Stephens and Jeremy Chambers John’s longtime friend Jessie Sain, Julia and Hugh Hannah, Lisa and Parker Shipp, Paul Seneker and friends that sister Beth and Anne would want to include in the fun.
You just knew that when the first week in October came you could count on an old-fashioned roaring fire and hot dogs, recalling simpler times of yesteryear in the back ard of the Bragg house.
I can’t remember when we stopped having the party – the year that John went to college, I guess. Even when he and his friends were in high school, the novelties of roasting hot dogs (and playing with the fire) and sneaking around by the river never seemed to get old.
John is older now.
His friends are scattered, many living far away and many out of state establishing families of their own.
No matter how old they are, I’ll bet when the weather cools and October comes they'll remember those fun family backyard times in Riverbend.
And maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll have a friend like Gary Middleton, to make a party out of nothing and step up to the plate when dear old Dad can’t be around.
'Til next week.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Login and voice your opinion!
|
Digg
Facebook
MySpace
Yahoo!