Your favorite writer won’t be collecting any hotel points or air miles next weekend.
Since I’m trying to post these every Tuesday for my own peculiar reasons, Memorial Day will have come and gone by the time I post again. And under different circumstances, I would be on the road this weekend for the day job.
So I thought an easy enough blog post to write on a rainy day like today would be a look back at my past few Memorial Day work trips.
The 2016 Tree Town Festival in Forest City, Iowa. Can you tell it rained most of the weekend?
2016: I should have brought boots
I spent part of Memorial Day weekend 2016 standing in a muddy field in northern Iowa, listening to country music. Not the most pleasant experience, sure, but I was there for a good cause: covering the donation of a track chair to help a wounded servicemember.
I didn’t plan for May weather in Iowa as I should have, so the sneakers I wore didn’t hold up to the heavy rains.
But I can’t complain too much. That trip to Iowa, via Minnesota, came at the end of a week in New England where I covered a job fair for veterans at Fenway Park, interviewed a couple Boys Nation alumni, and spent a couple days in Bangor, Maine, checking out the world of Stephen King.
Not bad. But next time I get an assignment to an outdoor music festival, I’m packing boots.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the start of the Indianapolis 500 as my flight was coming in, 2017.
2017: A heck of a view
I was home by the time Memorial Day itself came around in 2017, thanks to a quick assignment in Delaware, where The American Legion was providing flags and poppies to travelers at a travel plaza.
As it turned out, my flight home that Sunday came in over Indianapolis Motor Speedway just as the Indianapolis 500 was getting underway. I was fortunate enough to be on the right side of the plane; the guy across the aisle from me asked me to send him one of the pictures I took as we descended.
There won’t be a race at IMS this Memorial Day weekend because of the pandemic unfortunately. But I’ll always have a memory of seeing the track from above as the green flag waved.
Inside at Oklahoma Boys State, 2018. There’s a reason I’m not a professional photographer.
2018: Memorial Day in Miami … Oklahoma, that is
One of the coolest parts of the day job for me is covering the Boys State and Boys Nation programs. Seeing high school juniors with the drive to make the world a better place is inspiring.
Most of the Boys State programs take place in June — well, not this year, but usually — but a few occur in May. So I spent Memorial Day week in 2018 in Miami, Oklahoma, covering Oklahoma Boys State.
Another part of the fun for me is finding stories beyond the unexpected when covering these programs. Heck, anytime you — OK, I — witness some small moment when I’m covering any assignment, and I realize that’s my way into the story. There’s a rush from that which I still get, some 20-plus years in the writing business. I think you’ll see what I mean in this story, one of a few I wrote from my week in Oklahoma.
Yes, I did the tourist thing and walked to Times Square when I was in Manhattan in 2019.
2019: I can drive anywhere now
So, on those occasions when I can pick my assignments, I try to get a few in one work trip so it’s not just fly out one day, cover an event, fly home the next. If I’m going to travel, let’s travel.
Which brings me to 2019. I don’t recall which assignment came first, but it ended up so that I could cover thousands of flags being placed at a national cemetery on Long Island, an exhibit about the GI Bill at the Intrepid Museum in New York City, and a New Jersey Legion post’s travels around the area to honor the fallen on Memorial Day itself.
The challenging part of this was that I was on my own to drive to all these places. Which meant driving from JFK airport onto Long Island during rush hour on a Friday of a holiday weekend; driving into Manhattan and then back out on a Sunday; and driving around New Jersey on Memorial Day itself.
I still haven’t driven in Los Angeles, but I can check the greater New York metropolitan area off my list. Next time, I’m Ubering.
Is that even a word?
The week ahead
A lot of the usual events surrounding Memorial Day are canceled, but I’ll echo the company line and encourage my dozens of readers to light candles of remembrance on their front porches on Memorial Day. More details in this story.
And one more thing to note: Thursday marks the 40th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back. Still the best of the Star Wars movies, and it reminds me of a funny little anecdote I’ve added to my page about my Dad.
See you next week.
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