Thanks to my sister Cindi, I have a new website! Visit http://www.joettestrings.com/
The new website reflects all my music activities. In addition to a page for my music studio and a photo gallery with pictures of past and present students, you can hear sound clips of some of my music- traditional classical guitar music, music on my renaissance guitar, and music ministry. Cindi did a wonderful job with her website design!
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The First Week of June
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Ruth is 29 weeks pregnant.
After leaving the park on Saturday, we had to wait for a crab that was crossing the road.
(I don't know why these pictures are appearing in reverse order from how I posted them.)
Swimming in the Loxahatchee River in Jonathan Dickinson State Park on Saturday.
Hallie graduates pre-school on Thursday
Stuart Beach on Wednesday
My Father and the Beach
With Father's Day approaching, I thought I would write about my father, since I have already written about my mother. One of my earliest memories of my father is of him taking us to the beach. So this will start out about my father, but also be about the beach. The other thing I think of when I think of my father is our family vacations, and that will be another story.
My father worked 11pm to 7 am at a steel plant. He would punch out at 7 am and get home at 7:20. I remember being on the couch looking out the window at our house on Riverton Ave., watching for him to come home in the morning. He came home and went to sleep. During the summer, when he woke up in the afternoon , he took us to the beach. We would walk down the street, past the little trailer park, past the store where we sometimes bought penny candy, and across the busy Lake Shore Road to Cloverbank Beach. The Cloverbank Homeowners took care of the beach. They all got together at the beginnining of the summer and had a beach clean-up day. People brought rakes to rake the sand and there would be a fire to burn driftwood and burnable trash.
Lake Erie was cool and refreshing on hot summer days. Thirty years later I would be taking my own 3 children to the beach on summer afternoons. We lived a little further down the coast and there was a beach we could walk to there also, but area homeowners were no longer keeping up any of the local beaches. So when we finally got a second car, I drove my children to one of the public beaches, Wendt Beach, a county park, or the Angola Town Park. The 3 kids played together nicely for hours at the beach- much better than they would occupy themselves at home. As they got older, I was able to read a book while watching them play on the beach. It was a great way to spend the summer.
Now that we have moved to Florida, being able to go to the beach makes it seem more like "home" than when we lived in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, it was almost 2 hours to drive to the Jersey shore and the shore wasn't anything like the beach on Lake Erie. For one thing, you had to buy a beach tag to use the beach. Also, the Jersey shore was a place most people went for a week, not an afternoon, and the areas around the beaches were tourist areas.
The beach we have been going to here in Florida, Stuart Beach, reminds me somewhat of Wendt Beach. Although there were no tall condos anywhere near Wendt Beach, if you don't look that far at Stuart Beach, it is similar to Wendt Beach. There were waves to jump at Wendt Beach that seemed big, although I am sure they were not as big as the ocean waves at Stuart Beach. Both beaches have a snack bar and a playground near the parking area.
Now my children are grown. My daughter and my grandchildren have been going to the beach with us on Saturday afternoons. Although it is only the beginning of June, it reminds me of summer on the shores of Lake Erie. My father will be coming to visit for the 4th of July. We will go to the beach and his great grandchildren will be the ones playing in the sand and jumping the waves.
My father worked 11pm to 7 am at a steel plant. He would punch out at 7 am and get home at 7:20. I remember being on the couch looking out the window at our house on Riverton Ave., watching for him to come home in the morning. He came home and went to sleep. During the summer, when he woke up in the afternoon , he took us to the beach. We would walk down the street, past the little trailer park, past the store where we sometimes bought penny candy, and across the busy Lake Shore Road to Cloverbank Beach. The Cloverbank Homeowners took care of the beach. They all got together at the beginnining of the summer and had a beach clean-up day. People brought rakes to rake the sand and there would be a fire to burn driftwood and burnable trash.
Lake Erie was cool and refreshing on hot summer days. Thirty years later I would be taking my own 3 children to the beach on summer afternoons. We lived a little further down the coast and there was a beach we could walk to there also, but area homeowners were no longer keeping up any of the local beaches. So when we finally got a second car, I drove my children to one of the public beaches, Wendt Beach, a county park, or the Angola Town Park. The 3 kids played together nicely for hours at the beach- much better than they would occupy themselves at home. As they got older, I was able to read a book while watching them play on the beach. It was a great way to spend the summer.
Now that we have moved to Florida, being able to go to the beach makes it seem more like "home" than when we lived in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, it was almost 2 hours to drive to the Jersey shore and the shore wasn't anything like the beach on Lake Erie. For one thing, you had to buy a beach tag to use the beach. Also, the Jersey shore was a place most people went for a week, not an afternoon, and the areas around the beaches were tourist areas.
The beach we have been going to here in Florida, Stuart Beach, reminds me somewhat of Wendt Beach. Although there were no tall condos anywhere near Wendt Beach, if you don't look that far at Stuart Beach, it is similar to Wendt Beach. There were waves to jump at Wendt Beach that seemed big, although I am sure they were not as big as the ocean waves at Stuart Beach. Both beaches have a snack bar and a playground near the parking area.
Now my children are grown. My daughter and my grandchildren have been going to the beach with us on Saturday afternoons. Although it is only the beginning of June, it reminds me of summer on the shores of Lake Erie. My father will be coming to visit for the 4th of July. We will go to the beach and his great grandchildren will be the ones playing in the sand and jumping the waves.
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