2014 Sunday -- Memorial Day Weekend in America

Memorial Day in America is really the last Monday of May, but most of our cemeteries decorate with flags for the entire weekend. Cayucos has a very old and very classic, but small, cemetery. Today we went to see the flags.

Many people in America no longer realize that Memorial Day is to honor the men and women in the armed forces who lost their lives during wartime. So this seems to have become a holiday when folks just honor all military personnel. Veteran's Day in November is truly the day set aside when all of America's military are recognized.

This cemetery is just across California's Hwy. #1 from the ocean. Some of the statues and grave markers are quite interesting.

About a year ago we were told by one of the Cayucos locals that the home we had purchased here in this coastal community in November 2012 was once the home of Hank Piaskowski. We just took that woman's word as truth and the two of us started referring to our place as "Hank's House" and that nickname stuck.

So we did some research and tried to learn about Hank. We learned that he was originally from the State of Washington and that he and his wife Kathryn moved to Cayucos about 20 years ago after Hank had retired and that he had spent his life as a merchant marine. We learned that he has a son in Oregon and we even thought of contacting him to sort out our facts, but then we never did. We did, though, keep asking people in town about Hank and finally the owner of the Cayucos Super Market told us he knew Hank and that Hank had never lived on our street, but had lived on the street just below ours.

That news didn't really much matter to us, we still call the place "Hank's House." So today as I was walking through the cemetery to get a good angle on the flags for my photos, I was absolutely stunned to look down and see the marker for Hank's grave and next to him the marker for his wife, Kathryn. We had said numerous times previously that we were going to go look for his grave in the cemetery, and today unintentionally we did that.

This has been a good Memorial Day Sunday,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol

P.S. I tried to upload from my iPhone app this collage of photos, along with my write-up on May 25th, but the whole post got stuck in the Queve and it just never completed the "publish." Unfortunately, I had forgot to highlight and copy my post that day before tapping the "publish" button. I could not remember what I wrote, and I was so frustrated that I just put off posting the photo till now, so I have tried to reassemble the message today which is Tuesday, 6/3/2014.