As Tevye sang: Tradition. Tradition. Diddle dooodle dooodle doo. Tradition! Ok, so maybe he didn't sing the diddle doodle do part; that's my attempt at giving words to instruments. I think this entire movie is imprinted in my memory along with others like Chariots of Fire and Heaven Can Wait and Tron. You can guess which one I was always trying to get mom to put in the old VHS machine. My winning percentage as an elementary school-aged kid was low.
Jean and I have made a concious effort over the years (Jean more concious than mine; mine just happen because I'm a creature of habit) to develop family traditions. Sunday is filled with our traditional ritual of attending our three-hour block of church meetings. If the Cox family were a car, it would come standard with 'Sunday Church Attendance' option. That's the basic model.
Map of the Cox Family Sunday Afternoon Walk
One additional bell and whistle that the Cox family engineers have added over the years is an afternoon walk. Now this isn't just some ordinary walk. This is the 1.2-mile (optional 1.4-mile route) Cox Family Sunday Afternoon Walk complete with the harvesting of 'bo-hogs', a ritualistic slapping of a red, diamond-shaped traffic sign that sits at the northern terminus of Clayton St.
Photo of a Bo-Hog
Red Yucca Plants
Bo Hogs, you ask? Well, those are seed pods that you might find on the red yucca (Hesperaloa Parviflora) - just not on many plants along our walking route. Sorry, HOA. You may have guessed that Bo Hogs is not Latin. It's Sethin. Seth is really good at creating names for things that he doesn't have the vocabulary for quite yet. We pluck them off and use our freshly harvested Bo Hogs as arm-launched missiles. Most of us return uninjured. Some of us never return.
Dried-Out Weapons Cache of Bo-Hogs
Ruby Making the Walk Official
The mid-point of our walk is marked with road signs that sit on a pole right behind a series of jersey barriers. The lowest sign is a red, reflective square that is rotated 45-degrees. You could say it's a Ruby-red diamond. Our tradition is that everyone, including the short ones, touch the red diamond before we turn around to return to our home. So far we have only had one conscientious objector and he was summarily ridiculed and scorned for his position on sign-touching.
Rachel, the Sign and the Sheep Mountain Range
We also do some non-motorized off-roading along the way. It's a dad-powered double stroller occupied by Seth and Ruby. For some odd reason the sidewalk in two different places immediately transitions to small, red landscaping rocks, making for a bumpy but exciting ride. Ruby in particular gets amped up about this portion of the walk and announces the off-roading by exclaiming "(Here it) Comes! Comes!"
So the next time you're in Vegas and want to experience an authentic Cox Family Sunday, come on over for our afternoon walk and enjoy the tradition. "Without traditions our lives would be as shaky as . . as. . . a fiddler on the roof." -Tevye
No comments:
Post a Comment