Visiting Back Home–kind of

I think I’ve gone back to visit my parents for Independence Day for the past four years. At least the last three, and I was there right after the 4th five years ago. Anyway, it’s a fluid tradition.

We bought watermelon, tomatoes, squash, and red cabbage. Some of the vegetables came from a small farm where the family was selling boxes of tomatoes from their backyard, and the melon was from Marie’s Produce, which is set up in a gas station parking lot at the intersection of two small roads. Some of the tomatoes looked really, really ugly, with scars and bruises and other serious imperfections, but once that was cut away they were still one thousand percent better than what I get at the grocery store and two hundred percent better than what I get at my farmers’ market.

We played with the dog.

I took photos of my folks.

(source)

This visit, I really wanted to stick around their place more than we have in the past. This is the first trip back with no grandparents in town to visit, and the drive to Memphis and back feels pretty long. We did go out to brunch at Three Angels Diner, where I ordered the tofu scramble. I didn’t take a picture because I thought it looked like barf, but it looked just like this photo posted on Yelp. It did have chunks of portabella and red bell pepper, but it was just a lot of one thing on a plate. At least I was hungry for supper three hours later!

We went to a great little fireworks show in the small town they live near, ate veggie dogs and red cabbage slaw, and generally had a good time.