About 10 years ago, I was watching a TV show and one of the characters used the term “4-20” during a conversation. I had no idea what that reference meant.

Then I figured it out and couldn’t believe that this has become a thing. And it still is. How out of touch can one sheltered man be?

Maybe not to the generation I hang with, but drop down a few levels and ask them if they know what that term means. I promise you they do.

Type in “420” in a Google search and if you didn’t know already, welcome to a new world.

The origins of 420 are all relatively stupid and that’s my favorite part of it. Most say students at a high school in California (of course) started it in 1971. Others claim it’s part of police lingo. Or that it comes from the California penal code. Or it’s a code you send to your dealer (not your car dealer).

Not incidentally, the final score of the football game in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was … you guessed it … 42-0.

It seems to me that this one day is probably no more special to its followers than the other 364. I mean, it’s not like the disciples of 420 are saving up for this one special day and then anxiously waiting for it to come back around.

But just like Pi Day has turned March 14 into a special day for math nerds and May 4th is a Star Wars holiday, April 20 has its nudged its way onto the calendar.

We are seriously running out of ideas for holidays.

At the expense of sounding like a weirdo, I love my Uncle Bill.

When we write each other, he is Sundance and I am Butch, which is a long story, but the short story is that I love him, and that with all my faults, he loves me. I can tell.

He has always taken time for me and seemed interested in whatever I was interested in at the time; all my thoughts of him are good, and always have been.

So I saw him Wednesday when I did a fast-break to momma’s to eat a weekday sandwich and see her and Don, her husband of 30 years?; it might be 30 years this June, now that I think about it. I remember when they got married in California, I called her that day from the press box in Omaha, Nebraska while I was covering LSU in the College World Series. I think they were in Carmel. First week of June. Happy Almost Anniversary, momma!

Uncle Bill and Aunt Willie live next door, and have lived there for more than 50 years. The picture you see here is of Uncle Bill and some of his roses. Some are beaten down by last week’s rain, but still, gallantly, they are holding their own.

After eating with momma, I walked next door where Uncle Bill was already in the back yard, working. Now retired, he loves yard work, as he always has. When they bury him, it will be a shame if we don’t put a pair of clippers in his back pocket.

I walked past a couple of pots of pansies — it’s been so cool they are still looking beautiful — and was greeted by oakleaf hydrangeas on my left. A fountain and tiny azaleas in front of me. Beautiful and full baskets of dianthus and verbena. And the roses, some of them almost as old as —but not as beautiful as — my Uncle Bill.

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