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Title: Gotta Be Over 40 to Understand
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Published: Jun 9, 2006
Author: unkonwn
Post Date: 2006-06-09 13:05:30 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 3472
Comments: 232
Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat a bite raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper, in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember anybody getting e.coli. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system. We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of hightop Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built-in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened, because they tell us how much safer we are now.... Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything, and she could even give you an aspirin for a headache or fever. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. Oh yeah..and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked! Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either, because if we did, we got our butt spanked there, and then we got butt spanked again when we got home. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a "dysfunctional family". How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?
Poster Comment: LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T---- SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 221.
#133. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
What a neat picture! A visual treasure!
We have a large mass. You can really lose yourself in them at times. You wish there was some sort of quantum tunneling device so that, if not to change, you could merely go back and be a bystander through it again. I was going through some of the "time portal" stuff when I was about 19 down at their place. I found a reel to reel tape player and some reels. I plugged it in and started it, and out comes my mothers voice. She's talking to my Dad, who's at that time flying helicopters in Vietnam in 1968. She's filling him in on the "wife stuff" (all the guys wives lived in the same area on base and were really tight, kinda like you see in the astronaughts wives in Apollo 13 for reference). She comments that I'm out in the driveway playing "stones and gravels" with the dog, our dachshund named Littlebit. My Dad gave the dog to my Mom as a Christmas present about 6 months before I was born. Me and that dog were thick as thieves and at the time I was listening to this, it was in the twilight of it's life. It wasn't but a few weeks later that she was put to sleep, near 20 years old. Serendipity? 20 years later, I still think about that dog. We have this trippy, nay, I should say kinda haunting, picture on the wall in our downstairs bathroom of a rural road, bordered by huge trees, shrouded by light fog and backlit. I always get this feeling that when my time comes to walk that path to the "light" and the Lord's reckoning, that it's going to be on that path, and the dog is going to be bolting and barking wildly down the road in it's dachshundy way to greet me. "Hey, where the heck have you been?!?! I've got a slobbery tennis ball with your name on it!" :-) It is kind of unusual to be my age and still have all of my known relatives living. The ones I knew that have died (4 great grandparents and a great great grandparent) were so ridiculously old it just seemed to me that, to them, it was right that they were headed off, hopefully, to be with something more familiar. The grandparents are such an insane wealth of information and arcanity. We talk about the bottles, and penny candy, but my grandparents talk about outhouses, and getting water from a spring, and using horses as the primary means of transport (Mom's side), and maybe having sulfa drugs. Hell, Mom's Mother lost 3 or 4 family members to the 1918 flu! And the most incredible, is a photo I have got to get digitized. I'll have to post it. It's the one with me, Mother, Grandfather, Great Grandfather, and Great Great Grandfather with the latter holding me. That Great great was born in 1862. I would give some years of life to have known what he thought of the state of the nation and the road we've come down. Hell, he went from a time when the country was in pitched battle with muskets and horse drawn breechless cannon over the course we'd take, to just barely missing his same homeland place some of it's citizens on the damn MOON! Hell, to close, I can only say that, the next time you see an old timer, ask them what it was like...
I don't have to wait for an 'old timer'........LOL.........those that know me know that my 93 year old Dad lives with me. Born in 1913. Didn't know what a car was til 1926. Laid brick in the streets of Dallas, TX, with his grandpa, when he was 15. Worked for the CCC program--I think that was in Colorado. Did a little boxing.........broke horses.........near dead ringer for Roy Rogers. Was asked if interested in doing stunt work for Roy and some other western heros. BEsides farming, he knew stone masonry and concrete work. Living in so-cal, he did masonry work for a number of stars as well as a number of wannabes. Dad actually was care taking a doctor's ranch in Montana when he was 83 years old. In his later years, I found that he was telling 'tall tales' to a bunch of the people I used to know in Montana--sort of around the old stove at a mercantile. I've got this real thing about 'lying' (reason I detest clinton and bush so very much). Lying is one of the few things I can honestly say I HATE. Anyways....... Back to the mercantile. One of the times I had went over there to check up on him, one of the folks had told me about Dad telling them about shooting coyotes from the back of his horse when he was young--and yes, doing it with the horse at a gallop or full run and him sitting backwards. I was really embarassed and was apologizing to Debbie and asking her to tell the others I really am ashamed of him for telling these whoppers. Debbie got quiet a moment and said that I should knock that shit off; that they all know this story and many others aren't true. But they appreciate the role of a story teller, a yarn spinner.......that they're truly few and far between nowadays. I felt about an inch or incha and a half high. Shortly after that, the doctor's wife sent me a copy of an essay her high school son had written as a class assignment on 'an older person who has affected your life'.or something like that. Teddy wrote about my Dad and the positive influence he had on him; that he first met my Dad when his mother had sent him out with cold water to my Dad at the tractor. Teddy was shy and wouldn't look up, so my Dad squatted down to his level and after thanking him for the water asked why he wouldn't look him in the eye, that that is the way real men are supposed to do. This essay goes on to mention a number of other things--including a lesson learned about doing a job and doing it well or not even bothering. And then the young man closed by telling how he and his older brother used to giggle and carry on about Dad's tall tales--and how they appreciated the time he spent with them; they knew these tales weren't real.....but he spent time with them. Dad's in his twilight now--acting more the child now with me the parent. I study genealogy and have had interviews with him. And the information gleaned is so neat. I really think if offered the chance he'd give a trip in a space ship a try. He's gone from horses and mules to wagons to cars to trains to airplanes to jets. And, of course, he's seen space ships. I have an uncle who tape recorded my grandfather in 1967 and my grandmother in about 1982. When I started the genealogy journey, the uncle sent me copies. You cannot image the joy--well, maybe you can--of hearing his voice again. Especially hearing him talk of his parents, especially his father, who served in the Civil War. And my grandmother.....bless her heart. She never spoke ill of others and she had the most marvelous tinkle of a laugh. Uncle captured that on the tape. I cry every time I play it........
Oral histories are an invaluable, wonderful link to our past.
They certainly are, Jim. I found in my genealogy researrch that back in the days of the WPA and CCC, those FDR programs, that some of the 'make work' jobs included sending people out into areas of the country where they would interview elderly people, and other specialized groups, i.e., native american indians. And then would write the interview up. One of my problems in genealogical research is that I can get side-tracked when I find something interesting. So............while I was stumped on finding any information which would relate to the dates or near places that a particular set of ancestors who went from Texas to Oklahoma, I came across these "Indian Papers".....really interesting interviews, and which apparently was widened to include other people from the area. I started reading one to sort of get an idea of what life must have been like for my great grandparents and their family even before Oklahoma begame a state-- when it was still Indian Territory. A rather exciting discovery was that one of the interviewers was also a gentleman who had notarized a number of papers for this particular set of great grandparents I was looking for. Even more exciting was to come across an interview of the wife of one of these great grandparents sons! Of course, trying to find out how couples met or fell in love or married back in that day is a lot harder than today where there are so many ways to leave this information for the world to know. But there it was--all laid out for me. She even provided dates! AND, it turns out her father was my great grandparents best friend! I had his name all over the notarized papers of my great grandfather as a witness. And he had even known him at Fort Belknap down in Texas!
Hell, we may be relatives - I remember my mother's parents telling us about the days when they lived in the Indian Territory before crossing the Red River to settle in Fannin county, TX. There's still scads of Rays and Dentons and their descendants living there today.
My beloved Grandpa Taylor was born in Bonham, Fannin Co.! But he wasn't the family I was searching for at the time. Grandpa Taylor's daddy was the pow in the civil war. I am sure, somewhere along the way, that I have seen the Denton name though! Now the great grandparents I was looking for may well have gone thru there. I found land records for them in Atascosa County. And census records and some of their private writings indicate they also were in Clay County, and Denton County (or was that the city/town of Denton), but they moved to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory as it was at that time. This great grandpa has such an interesting story (as much as I've found thus far).
Goosebumps here. The Taylor's are still going strong in Fannin county: my brother married a Taylor lass from a little town named Ector, just west of Bonham.
Does the name McKay ring any bells? Or Coleman?
No, but I'll ask my brother - his MIL, now in her mid-eighties, is still doing well in Ector, and they may have some information for you.
The McKays are direct line. Colemans are not, though they figure into some of the family story. When the greatgrandfather Taylor moved to Texas after the death of his first wife, he settled near Fannin County. Met and married a Jenkins. They had 5 kids, IIRC, and she died when the youngest was a wee baby. The Jenkins and Colemans (apparently related) took the kids to raise. GG Taylor at some point moved to Fannin County where he met his 3rd wife, who was a McKay, and is my line of descent. They had a slew of kids. Some of the time, some of the others came to live with them, though they went back and forth, it seems. Small worlds happened even back then. GG Taylor was in the civil war. One of the soldiers he met up with in those days was a T. McKay. GG Taylor was from Arkansas; I think McKay was Mississippi. GG Taylor was one of the last exchanges of prisoners. He kept fighting though til the end of the war. Then married, and his wife died while pregnant with their first baby. He apparently was beside himself with grief and moved away to Texas to start fresh. As I said above, the second marriage occurred. And then the third marriage. Turns out in this last marriage that T. McKay and his new wife are brother and sister! They had not kept in touch after the military experience. But the McKays had moved 'west' as did so many of the Southerners after the way; that they went to Texas, and then found each other was quite a find. In their latter years, they settled in and died in and around Rains County.
#224. To: rowdee (#221)
I'd forgotten about the Jenkins in Fannin county: there was a family who had a farm about half a mile from my grandparents place - Merle & Elmer, they are somehow related to us by marriage; distant marriage, thank goodness and RIP.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestGrandparents on Pop's side at the POW Ball in 1947...
#136. To: Axenolith (#133)
#174. To: rowdee (#136)
#194. To: Axenolith (#174)
#207. To: rowdee (#194)
I have an uncle who tape recorded my grandfather in 1967 and my grandmother in about 1982. When I started the genealogy journey, the uncle sent me copies. You cannot image the joy--well, maybe you can--of hearing his voice again. Especially hearing him talk of his parents, especially his father, who served in the Civil War. And my grandmother.....bless her heart. She never spoke ill of others and she had the most marvelous tinkle of a laugh. Uncle captured that on the tape. I cry every time I play it........
#210. To: lodwick (#207)
Oral histories are an invaluable, wonderful link to our past.
#212. To: rowdee (#210)
I started reading one to sort of get an idea of what life must have been like for my great grandparents and their family even before Oklahoma begame a state-- when it was still Indian Territory.
#214. To: lodwick (#212)
#215. To: rowdee (#214)
My beloved Grandpa Taylor was born in Bonham, Fannin Co.!
#216. To: lodwick (#215)
#217. To: rowdee (#216)
Does the name McKay ring any bells? Or Coleman?
#221. To: lodwick (#217)
Replies to Comment # 221.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 221.