It’s the afternoon of the Fourth of July. We’re out on the back verandah. We are not doing Heron Watch because we now have a motion-activated sprayer, a Heron Blaster, as it were, that has been keeping our heron at bay. The heron blaster has also surprised Bill and Bella and me. When Bella is blasted, she takes off like a shot, and I’m guessing the heron does, too, since we haven’t seen him since the day it was installed. YAY!!!

We’ve had company all week. Pat McAdams Hall and I became friends in fourth grade which, astonishing as it may seem, is close to sixty years ago. With the help of the Internet, we’ve remained good friends and in touch with one another’s lives all this time. She’s a kindergarten teacher who lives and works in central Florida. I thought what she needed after a stressful school year was a quiet week with us here, and this is the week. We haven’t had a huge to-do list of sights to see. We had dinner on Tuesday with several friends and classmates from Bisbee High School. We’ve read books. We’ve watched for the heron. It has been peaceful. And relaxing. It turns out what we regard as summer, Pat regards as close to winter. This morning when the weatherman said it would be “hot” this afternoon, as in the seventies, Pat thought it was hilarious. In Florida, the seventies do NOT qualify as HOT!

As Judy Busk, I was one of seven kids. The “Kids’ bedroom” in our house resembled a bunkhouse, complete with a crib (for whoever was the youngest) a “three-quarter” bed for the big girls, and a stack of bunk beds for everybody else.

Pat had one brother, Ted. Both she and Ted had bedrooms of their own; bedrooms they didn’t have to share with anyone else. Coming from my over-crowded existence, going to Pat’s house and being able to play in her room with only ONE person was astonishing. I loved going there. We read books together–Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. We played Monopoly and Dominos. And we played with paper dolls.

Paper dolls did not pass the Evie Busk approved-toy test, so I never had any paper dolls of my own. As a consequence, I loved going to Pat’s house to play with HER paper dolls.

I remember clearly, sitting on the carpeted floor in Pat’s bedroom, playing with a set of dolls that had been created in honor of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation, one of the first television events I remember watching. Come to think of it, I believe I watched that at Pat’s house, too.

So this week, Pat showed up with a gift-wrapped package for me. When I unwrapped it, I found, low and behold, a vintage book of Queen Elizabeth Paper Dolls. Not the exact one I remember playing with, but one that came from way back then–her coronation in1953.

It was a wonderful surprise. And the tag said it was from “Jat for Pudy.” In 1962, when Pat and I were co-editors of our school newspaper, the Copper Chronicle, Pudy and Jat was how we signed the column we wrote for the April Fool’s edition of the paper.

She also gave me a BFF coffee cup which seemed entirely appropriate because, it turns out, we have been best friends forever.

As I’m writing these words, a Girl Scout song, a round I learned in Brownies, is echoing through the back of my head.

Make new friends but keep the old
One is silver and the other gold.

It’s true. Old friends are the gold friends. (We will not mention how much trouble Bill managed to get himself into by introducing Pat to someone else as Judy’s “oldest friend.”) He still hasn’t quite dug himself out of the hole he dug himself into with that remark, but it was all in good fun and I’m pretty sure he’s been forgiven.

It’s been a vacation for all of us. We’ve read books. We’ve watched Hulu episodes ofJeeves and Wooster. We’ve talked.

Next week it will be time to go back to writing Joanna # 16. But for today? I hope you had a happy Fourth of July. I’m sure that many of the folks in Prescott, Arizona, aren’t feeling a lot like celebrating this weekend. And attendees at the World’s Oldest Rodeo are probably a bit subdued this year, too. I know I am.

Those fine young men from Prescott who died protecting others won’t ever have the opportunity to sit on a porch on a flawless summer’s day and reflect on friendships that have lasted for sixty years. I grieve for their friends and for their families.

This may the first Fourth of July celebration they will miss, but I also know they won’t be forgotten.

Sixty years from now, their loved ones will still remember.