The 4th

I am confident that you already know that today is the Fourth of July and that it is called America’s 250th birthday.   The 4th of July stirs memories in me since I had just arrived in Stevens Point a few days before.  I told the people hiring me that I couldn’t take the job without a summer assignment.  We were strapped for cash.  Education faculty are used to a surge of experienced teachers showing up for master’s degree courses during summer.  They made up a summer wave of graduate students.

I flew to Point while Lynn oversaw the movers and drove our daughters here from College Park, a long drive especially for a single driver.

Stevens Point seemed somewhat like Towson, the seat of Baltimore County and the place where I had met Lynn and dated her.  I expected to teach pre-teachers and graduate teachers at UWSP for the rest of my career and that’s what happened.

My first days were filled with the excitement of a new place and at the time of a national holiday.  Lynn timed her drive from Maryland to be in Point during the last days of June.  We had arrangements to live in a house available because the professor who lived there had a year’s sabbatical at an institution in the east. The Fourth of July holiday was our first experience of note in Stevens Point and it was a good one.

When the 4th rolls around, I am transported back to getting started here.  It is exciting.