Monday, May 16, 2005

NATS WIN! Nats 5 - Brewers 2, A great day to be at the ball park as Vinny Castilla belts one in the 4th.                                   Vinny Touches 'em all! 11:56:15 PM      Throw Me A Bone []

Time Travel   (inspiration from Katya and her Grandmother)   Youth is wasted on the young.  Some kids are smart, I’m not talking about good grades in school smart, I’m talking about life smart.  As a child you have an opportunity to learn history from someone who has lived it, your Grandparents.  So few realize this at a young age and sadly I was not one of them.  Not only did I have 3 of my grandparents I had a great-grandmother.  She was born in 1869, 4 years after the Civil War ended.  She lived to be 104.  The stories she could have told me if I had been smart enough to listen.  She used to go from South Jersey into Philadelphia when she was 99.  She moved in with my grandparents before I was born and I’ve been told that she was a hard woman and made life very difficult for my Grandmother but I didn’t know anything about this.  I remember going to the nursing home to visit her.  I hated it.  That place just gave me the creeps.  We’d stay for a couple of hours and then leave, I was so happy to get out of there.  I was 10.  I was stupid.  Imagine the things I could have learned.  This is a person who lived in a time period where the main form of transportation was the horse and then watched a man walk on the moon!  How do you comprehend that leap in technology.  I remember having a big clunky calculator, how cool was that, a major improvement over the slide rule.  Now you can carry 2000 songs around in your pocket.  Not quite the mind blowing leap that my great-grandmother experienced.  She saw cars, planes, radio, television, space travel, terrible wars, the depression, all happen in her lifetime.  So much to learn!  I remember one story though.  She told me of riding around on buckboards, horse drawn carts, on dirt roads around their farm.  A cousin was riding one, going pretty fast.  He hit a ditch or something and went flying.  “He looked so funny flying through the air” she said, “he was killed of course”.   If only I could go back in time and listen.  I’m older and wiser now and was lucky enough to have my Grandparents alive while I was in my 30’s.  I did listen to their stories and loved them.  Now they are all gone, a whole generation of my family.  I miss them but I still remember their stories.   7:22:49 AM      Throw Me A Bone []

© Copyright 2005 Michael Doughten. Last update: 6/2/2005; 1:21:02 AM.