Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Memorial Day Tradition

Every year on Memorial Day, we gather to decorate graves of family members in the area. Each year we put a lot of thought into how we will decorate my dad's grave. This year my mom came up with the perfect idea, and with the hubby's help we built it.

My dad worked for the local independent telephone company (Sunflower Telephone Co.) for most of his adult life. We've always decorated his grave with sunflowers and we always know when one of his co-workers and good friend visits because he always leaves sunflowers at his grave too.

This year, my mom found some blue telephone insulators and we decided to make a telephone pole cross for his grave. After a quick trip around the barn for old wood, metal and bolts, we had the supplies to tackle our project.

Because the wood was old and hard - and so was the metal, I had to enlist the brawn of the hubby to do the drilling. We drilled holes for dowels to hold the insulators on the cross arm, and holes in the metal to make the cross arm supports.

With the hubby's help in no time we had our cross constructed. A little stencil painting, and it was complete.


So happy with the way it turned out, and it's the perfect tribute to my dad - "the telephone man".

~Sharla

3 comments:

  1. Love this its so personal and appropriate!
    Over here in UK , certainly here in Hull, grave stones are regularly toppled over and broken by hooligans, who need a good thrashing frankly lol wheres Superman when you need him!
    But theyd surely break or steal those delightful blue insulators -
    (wasn't there a catchy song The Telephone Man? )

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  2. Thank you Liniecat. Hoping that no one breaks or steals anything! I googled 'song about a telephone man'. Ha, Ha! Hilarious! It's by Meri Wilson. I'd never heard it before.

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  3. As a collector of insulators the familiar glint of blue caught my eye. At the end of your post my mind had thought of four family sites waiting for their "Called Home" markers. Thank you for the inspiration.

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