June 18, 2019 (Tuesday)
Today is a perfect day to go outdoors and have a picnic. It can be in a park, or right in your back yard.
Picnics are held outdoors from spring through fall. Picnics are enjoyed by everyone. Any reason is a good excuse to have a picnic. When I was growing up, we had big dinners outside with all of my father’s siblings and their families. We met at city parks, County parks, beaches, creeks, rivers, you name it. Always lots of fun and good food.
Fill up a picnic basket, grab a blanket, and go to a nearby park for lunch. Make sure to take that special someone along. If you’ve got all day, hold a full blown picnic, with food, fun and games.
International Picnic Day appears to have been celebrated for decades, but no one knows when it got its start.
Here is Wanda getting things together after a picnic. I’m guessing that the picture was made in a Fort Worth park near the zoo. I am also guessing that the year was probably 1952 or 1953. We were not yet married.
Through the years we had many picnics. Some of them were in roadside parks back in the days when they were just cleared off spots on the side of the road. We had picnics on the road as we traveled. Later on we would discover very nice roadside parks with all the amenities. At Oletha they were big affairs, with lots of people, and so much food no one could possible go hungry. They were called “Memorials,” and there were several in the area. After moving to Dallas, we took advantage of city parks, expecially at Whiterock Lake. In Rockport there are choices: the beach, Memorial park, the parks at Fulton Harbor and Rockport Harbor, and a roadside park that no longer exists that was on Highway 35 in town. We sometimes had “dinner on the grounds” at the church, and, of course, we took full advantage of the back yard at home.
When we dined in parks on the road, we sometimes had rain, sometimes a little chilly, at times very warm. One park on the river in California holds many records for heat. One day we stopped there and tried to make sandwiches, but it was too hot. The bread dried and shriveled right before our eyes, before we could put anything on it.
While sandwiches made most of the meals, sometimes Wanda would have fried chicken. Sometimes she made home made cookies or cakes. There were plenty of soft drinks or tea if you preferred. There was always much more than we could eat.