July 20, this is a day not to, as Gail Barnett sang in 1966, “Sing in the sunshine.”  It’s more a day for the “naughty lady of Shady Lane,” as sung by the Ames Brothers in 1954, who it turns out is only “nine days old.”

On this day in 1969 Becky and I and 14-month-old Nathan took a 15-mile drive from Winona, MN. across the Mississippi to Galesville, Wi. in the scenic “Driftless Area” of south western Wisconsin.  We were in a park where Nathan was reluctant to test his newly discovered walking legs on a swinging bridge across a creek.  There is where we heard the news that men had landed on the moon.

One of the stories about Galesville is, that it is situated near three rivers and some early settlers surmised that maybe this was the location of the Garden of Eden.  It wouldn’t be a bad location for that bit of God’s creation.

In 1974, we were camping in the Chequamegon National Forest in northern Wisconsin while listening to a battery-operated radio we learned that President Nixon had resigned.

For that matter, Becky and I took out our wedding trip in June 1967 into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  (Becky has given up on an actual honeymoon trip).  When we came out to Ely a week later, we heard talk of a six-day war in the middle east that had been fought and settled while we were gone.