David McElroy

I would have sworn that Jack and Martha were newlyweds if they hadn’t been quite a bit on the older side. When they first came into the fast food restaurant where I was having dinner Monday night, they seemed like a young couple in love. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw them sit at a booth together — side by side instead of across from one another. What I didn’t know then is that they were newlyweds. They just got married Monday.

Jack fell in love with Martha more than 50 years ago, but he was too timid to approach the girl he said was the prettiest in the school. Besides, Martha always had plenty of dates, so he didn’t think she could possibly be interested in a skinny boy with little confidence and no apparent future. That was in the early ’60s at a high school near Birmingham. Neither knew that they would end up together in 2012.

Jack graduated from high school two years ahead of Martha and headed off to college. He kept a picture of Martha that he had gotten from one of her friends. Unknown to him at the time, Martha had wanted Jack to ask her out, but he had never shown any interest.

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Whatever you think of the orgy of nationalism that accompanies a holiday such as the Fourth of July — and you know what I think — I hope you have an enjoyable day with family, friends or someone special.

This picture is from the fireworks display that takes place every year on the top of Birmingham’s Red Mountain for the Fourth. That statue is Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, who represents Birmingham’s roots as a center for iron production. He’s the world’s largest cast iron statue, and it can be fun to take the elevator up to the pedestal on which he stands and see how far you can see.

If you happen to like the picture and you’d like a larger copy, you can download it here. It’s 2880×1800, so it’s set up for the display size of a MacBook with retina display, although it should work just fine at lower resolutions, too.

Have a great day. Enjoy food and fireworks if you can, wherever you are.

What started long ago as a celebration of independence from the rule of a foreign power has become something very different today. The Fourth of July was once a day when Americans celebrated their independence and their way of life. In too many cases, it’s ended up becoming a worship of state and a celebration of militarism.

As a result, I don’t enjoy as much about the Fourth of July as some people do. I look at the nationalistic elements that have crept in and become dominant for so many people — and I cringe. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to love what it originally stood for. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be a part of an extended family celebrating our homes and our lives.

I wrote last year about how people have come to associate words such as “conservative” and “liberal” with political positions. I’m not that kind of conservative and haven’t been for more than 20 years. But I’m a traditionalist in many ways. I’m an odd mix. I love many things about the modern world, but I feel a tug to a past that I’ve never experienced. In the truest sense of the word, I’m a conservative in those ways. There’s much about the values and lifestyle of our past that I want to conserve, and I’m extremely conservative in my own lifestyle.

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