Saturdays

Rediscover the day of the week that belongs to you

Written by MARIE SPEED

aturday has been my favorite day of the week for as long as I can recall. In fact, some of my earliest memories are of Saturdays as a child in Fairfax, Virginia, when my father would take me with him when he drove my brother to Boy Scouts downtown. On those days, while we were waiting for him, the magic began. One day it would be the stately Pan Am building with its garden, ca. 1910, home to the Organization of American States. Another day it would be the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial. My favorite place to go, however, was the Smithsonian Museum—the dinosaur room—with its towering 70-foot skeleton of a Diplodocus, stark in the museum gloom, years before anything was remotely “interactive,” aside from your heart beating in your chest as you stared up at those teeth.

For most of my formative years, I am afraid that is the only part of the Smithsonian I cared about, aside from the spooky immense Hope Diamond nestled under glass a room or two away.

Saturdays were also for the zoo, the hardware store, shopping for school clothes at Best & Co., a soda at Gifford’s and a million other things that made life worth living.

That has never changed, all these years later, especially if my friends Judy and Billy Haynes are visiting, and Billy and I find ourselves on a mission on a Saturday morning. I know for sure we were once off to get a box of nails at Ace, and ended up picking strawberries, buying a whole set of shot glasses, and scoring the entire Rolling Stones music collection at Costco. And that was just before noon.

Saturdays are when you wander out to a native plants nursery and end up at Lake Okeechobee at Port Mayaca. It’s the day you take that airboat ride, or visit every antique store on Dixie Highway before lunch.

We’ve brought you several ideas for Great Saturdays on page 46—think of it as a starter kit— where you can trade in that errand list for discoveries, and start living again.

In this issue, Tyler Childress also explores a generation that often experiences a failure to launch, with obstacles from employment to housing. His thoughtful piece on Gen Z (page 56)—who they are, what they are facing—raises a lot of questions, including the power and pitfalls of social media.

All the more reason to put the screen down, toss out the to-do list, and get out in the world—if only for a day. Because, and here we cue the great John Lennon quote: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

We’ll see you out there.