I always loved Memorial Day.

For that matter, I still do.

I wish I could say I love the holiday solely for what it represents: a way of honoring our fallen soldiers who paid the ultimate price in service to their county.

And, make no mistake, I am humbled just thinking about such sacrifice.

On Monday, certainly I will bow my head in prayer as I remember those sacrifices and honor the brave men and women who made freedom available to me.

For me, though, Memorial Day always marked something else of special significance: the first holiday weekend of the summer.

It was a holiday marked by the municipal pools opening up, school having wound down or finished up, and campfires in the evening.

I grew up in a camping family. Every weekend of the summer, my family would pack things up and head to a campground, where we kept a trailer on a permanent lot that we rented. It was a great life and many great friendships and memories were made there over the years.

And, when it came time to find work as a teenager, I thought I hit the jackpot when the campground hired me. Working there meant that, during the week, I had the trailer to myself and I only had to adjust my living patterns over the weekends, when the rest of the family arrived.

Many a night was spent around a campfire with friends, listening to stories or telling tales.

Under a canopy of stars, it mattered not whether some of the exaggerations grew bigger every week.

The campground work was a mixture of everything from sweaty labor that built my muscles to social interactions that sharpened my brain.

During the weekdays, I usually did physical chores like running a tractor and brush-hogging a field or digging up a sewer line to unplug a clog. On weekends, when the bulk of the campground’s visitors arrived, I was the activities director. It was my job to offer guests fun activities that would make them happy and bring them back again.

I also published my first newspaper there, writing and editing a weekly publication known as the Farma Review. It wasn’t Pulitzer material, but I gained satisfaction and confidence doing it.

All of those memories had one big thing in common: They all began each year on Memorial Day.

Obviously, you can’t have a summer holiday without a swimming pool, and, each year, my coworkers and I would labor nonstop from morning to night sanding, sealing, and repainting the pool.

The pool was fed from natural spring water and took weeks to fill. As that was taking place, you had to start adjusting the chemicals for the pool and make sure the filter system was going to run correctly. Each year, it seemed as if we went down to the wire to get it operational, but we never missed a holiday opening.

With the spring water, I remember that pool being cold as ice. Yet, somehow, after a day in the sun digging ditches, that pool was the best thing ever.

I haven’t been camping for a long time. It was a pastime my own family never embraced much.

But, now and then, I get nostalgic. I have a lot of memories from those days.

Memorial Day always triggers them.

As you can surmise from this column, the memories began a bit early this year, and that’s OK.

It’s the start of summer, for sure.

But again, that is only secondary.

This weekend’s holiday is a day to honor true heroes, and that is what we all need to remember this year.

In a world where freedom seems all the more important, this Memorial Day, we remember the men and women who fought and died to preserve that freedom for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bill Speer retired in 2021 as the publisher and editor of The News. He can be reached at bspeer@thealpenanews.com.