By Georgia Osten
The 4th of July fell at an unusual time this year. My husband and I recalled several years ago, when we were employed … Yeah, right, we had real jobs. The type you go to Monday through Friday, where you earned vacation and your vacation rolled over the beginning of each year. Sometimes, you would have some vacation you didn’t manage to take during the year and it would roll over to the next year. Oh my goodness, the joy of knowing you had more time off! Sometimes, the longer you were employed, you would accrue more vacation the next year! Holy Cow! The holidays would roll around and you’d think to yourself, I can tack on some extra days to this or that holiday.

Well, that’s exactly what you would do with a holiday like this July 4th. With July 4th falling on a Tuesday, you would probably say to yourself “I might as well begin my holiday the Thursday before.” That would give you Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday. Then, you’d probably say to yourself “I might as well take Monday off too since Tuesday is a holiday.” I’ll be darn, there you go. You’ve got yourself a six-day holiday. Heck, you could even go somewhere with that kind of time off. Travel I mean!

These days, I have a job still (by choice), but our holiday was on Monday, July 3rd. So, I’ll work on Tuesday. So, I went to Galveston on Monday to do some much-needed grocery shopping. I haven’t shopped since before the Florida kids left the beach. The ferry line wasn’t too bad going over. After all, I caught the 8:30 ferry. Galveston was busy, but not so busy I couldn’t maneuver around town. Kroger was interesting. Lots of people coming in off the beach to use the bathrooms. Lots of people parking in the Kroger parking lot to go to the beach. They’d come in to shop for their beach outing, use the bathroom, buy beach towels and beach toys, junk to eat and drink, then go out to their car to throw everything in bags and walk on over to the beach.

On the way home, the ferry line was back to the Walgreens traffic light. I managed to take a back route to get to the line where I could cruise in the righthand lane for priority boarding. Then, all of a sudden, just past the light on Ferry Road, a car trying to cut into line. No, there were no police around, so the SUV just waited to cut, blocking the righthand lane. Several people honked, but the SUV was oblivious. Finally, someone let him in and the car behind him snuck in as well. The folks in the car behind the second guy weren’t very pleased and laid on the horn. Too late, no remorse, and those two didn’t have to wait in traffic as long as the folks way back up there by Walgreens.

When I reached the Bolivar side, I was amazed to see the ferry line stretched back to the Fort Travis entrance. Equally as many people coming as going from Bolivar.

Happy to be home, groceries put away, and I’m not going out again except to work in the morning.

Y’all be safe out there. Watch out for traffic. Watch out for golf carts on the highway. It’s a jungle out there!!!
HAPPY 4TH

[GO: July-4-2023]