My Dear Friends,

July is upon us. I love July, except for the heat. There are many wonderful feast days in July on the Roman calendar. St. Thomas the Apostle (July 3rd), St. Benedict (July 11th), St. Kateri Tekakwitha (July14th), St. Bonaventure (July 15th), Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16th, and the Mount Carmel festival at the Mount Carmel Church in Town Plot section of Waterbury), St. Mary Magdalene (July 22nd), St. James the Apostle (July 25th), St. Joachim and St. Anne (July 26th), St. Martha, now with St. Mary and St. Lazarus (July 29th), and St. Ignatius of Loyola (July 31st).

There are, of course, other saints that we celebrate as well, but these are pretty big saint days. There are three other days in July that mean something. July 4th is Independence Day 1776, and July 17th is the day I brought Barley home as a five month old puppy in 2013, and July 26th is also my birthday besides the feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne. I have fond memories of my swimming pool when I was growing up in Watertown and the many cookouts we had during the summer months.

I think that is why I have a love for hot dogs and hamburgers to this day. And I cannot forget the tune of the ice cream truck in the neighborhood, but, alas, my mother and father would only allow us a treat from the ice cream truck maybe once a week. And the soda that my parents bought was not from the grocery store. It was not until I was in high school that I finally had real coca cola and ginger ale. Until then, we would drink soda made from Granite Springs in Thomaston, and there were always so many different flavors.

My parents would grudgingly allow us to have the other flavors besides coke and ginger ale. We had cream, root beer, birch beer, orange, raspberry, and grape. I’m sure there were other flavors, but those are the flavors I remember. July was also the time I would walk a good couple of miles to the local drug store, Drug City (a nice name for a drug store back then), next to the Farm Shop ice cream shop and Finest grocery store. I would walk there in order to buy my baseball cards with the money I saved up from the paper route I inherited from my older brothers and sister.

Enjoy your summer and enjoy the memories that you have made from your youth. And if you are young now, make those memories for yourself. Get outside and turn off your cell phones; listen to nature not manufactured noise.

Happy July.

God bless!

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