Holiday weekend was a perfect time to reconnect, reflect

What a great weekend.

The just passed Fourth of July holiday served up a perfect menu of generous portions of family and friends topped off by time to dial life down just a little from the hectic pace it had been on recently.

It wasn’t totally without sweat, however.

I got to check off the big project, finishing the moving of the final dozen wheelbarrows of river rock — the last of 6,000 pounds dumped in my driveway — into the backyard and hopefully make one more flower bed a zero maintenance zone.

There was another bonus: I even found the top of my workbench in the garage after finding the places where nuts, bolts, screws and various tools are supposed to live.

And for some reason, my friend Russ tossed out the idea that we ought to perform an exorcism on the possessed toilet adjacent to the guestroom. He and his wife Suzanne swore it would routinely flush itself over and over again.

Mind you Russ, a Realtor by day/night and owner of a fleet of rentals, had just spent weeks updating some of his Portland, Ore. properties, so perhaps, like me, he could not fully decompress and totally relax without bonding with a hand tool of some kind.

But our downtime, which was significant, was spent connecting, catching up and chatting about everything under the hot, hot sun.

We had the excuse to all hang out thanks to friends who staged an additional wedding reception out West for their daughter who had been married a couple months earlier in far away Washington, D.C.

Both Russ and I are pretty close in age, we’ve known each other for many, many years.

We both love the outdoors and were able to find some “exploring” to do while our wives — best friends since college days too long ago to mention — sought out ways to abuse their debit cards.

I took Russ to one of my favorite places, Riverside State Park’s Bowl and Pitcher area with its iconic suspension footbridge that arches over the Spokane River.

That got us both musing back to our various childhoods, his in the “Cheesetown” of Tillamook, Ore., and much of mine a short hike from where we were standing watching the river flow by, albeit a relative trickle compared to normal years.

As a kid, Russ spent many of his days hanging out along the shores of the Wilson River fine-tuning his love for the outdoors and a passion for fishing.

My buddies and I would either hike or bike our way down the hill, to Riverside State Park, with my mother’s warning swimming in my head: “Don’t go near that river, people die down there.”

What struck us both was those were our generation’s proverbial “good ‘ol days.” As 12-year-olds we would be gone for hours either exploring our respective river shores, the woods or on climbing rocks where a fall could result in who knows how serious an injury.

But our mothers didn’t have to be connected to us with a cell phone, still decades in the future. The promise of a hearty dinner that night was enough of an incentive for us to stay safe and be home before dark.

Both of us have used that self-assuredness we learned, and the trust our parents put in us, later in life in both personal and business relationships.

That got us musing about how much things have changed with our children who unfortunately feel that the world is much too dangerous a place to even let their children play in the front yard alone, heaven forbid be on their own to bike or hike as we did.

The ironic part is probably despite growing up with a rope just long enough that we had freedom, but didn’t hang ourselves, we’re partly to blame for instilling some of that fear of the world beyond our yards.

And that’s just too darn bad because there’s a lot to learn out there to help guide one down the various roads of one’s life.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].