Good morning and happy Adair Drug Tuesday, ladies and gentlemen! As always, thanks for starting your day with us here at The County Line.
We are proud to share the third installment of Adair Drug Tuesday today, brought to you by the fine folks located at 510 Burkesville Street in Columbia. If you happen to drop in (or speak to them on the phone: 270-384-9999), please offer a “thank you” for the effort to keep us in business.
Adair Drug is not the only cause for celebration today, however. Our faux holiday to spotlight for July 26 is surprisingly worthy, and deserves better than sharing the date with National Coffee Milkshake Day, which is unfortunately also today. This one is for moms’ and dads’ sisters and brothers: Happy National Aunt and Uncle Day.
Besides the not-quite-right name (why not “Aunts” and “Uncles” instead of the singular version?), there’s a lot to like here. In this writer’s humble opinion, aunts and uncles are awesome, and should have a more official holiday in their honor.
I am not an expert on much, but this particular topic is in my wheelhouse.
A bit of background: Each of my parents were one of seven kids. Including their spouses, and great-aunts and great-uncles who stuck around long enough for me to know (as well as their spouses), the tally probably tops three dozen. The point is that I’ve known a lot of aunts and uncles in my time, and I was blessed not only in their quantity but their quality. Growing up, they were kind of like parents, but nicer and less strict.
I was also blessed that my aunts and uncles collectively gave me the best of both worlds.
On one hand, I had several sets who lived in different parts of the country, so it was always a BIG EVENT when we’d see them and my cousins once a year, twice if I was lucky. This always made Christmas and Thanksgiving extra exciting, like my extended family tripled in size overnight. Sometimes we’d have several sets of aunts/uncles/cousins all coming in from different places, and we’d have to rent the Christian Life Center (now the Jim Blair Center) because no one’s house was big enough to fit everyone.
On the other hand, I had aunts and uncles within walking distance of my house. I would see them almost every day, even if I had to walk to their house and barge in like I owned the place, unannounced, uninvited, and unaware of how unnerving that probably was. Two of my dad’s sisters and their husbands lived close enough that I could walk through the field to their houses unsupervised by the time I was 5 or 6. His two brothers and another sister lived a little farther away, maybe an entire mile.
I didn’t think much about this situation when I was a kid — I just knew that I had a bunch of aunts and uncles and I liked all of them. As I got older, I realized how uniquely fortunate I was to grow up like this. Some people don’t have any aunts or uncles. Others might have some that they never really got to know. Some people’s aunts and uncles are losers and not worth knowing. I’m thankful that my big, sprawling group are the kind that deserve way more than today’s unknown pseudo-holiday.
Today’s Quote of the Day fits this vastly undercelebrated and underpublicized holiday, and comes from the acclaimed 20th century novelist and journalist Robert Cormier:
“I’ve had aunts and uncles who not only haven’t read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.”
He would surely be jealous of me. Although I have never written a book and could not at all compare to Mr. Cormier in terms of talent, success, fame, or accolades, every aunt and uncle of mine that is still alive knows I’m a writer. I hope they all have the best day possible.
Let’s check in with the intern for today’s weather:
Put on your rain boots! At 6:30 a.m., it’s 74 degrees and cloudy across The County Line coverage area. The high today will only reach the low 80s, and expect thunderstorms to pop up throughout the day.
That’s all for now. Thanks for joining us, and check back for more fresh content throughout this Adair Drug Tuesday.
This post is brought to you as part of our Adair Drug Tuesday.
