The Best of times?

 

Memories seem to flash by way too quickly to catch all of them and remember them as I should. So when I do, I write them down so that my great-granddaughter can tell my great-great-granddaughter who I was and who her ancestors were. They will not have known me as I wish they would have because I will be gone by that time. I wish I had known my great grandparents even a little. I now look at names and I wonder who they were and did they have the same likes and dislikes as me? Would they have liked me or would they have even cared?

My Dad was a good man in his younger days with us and took the time to do things with us. I remember one day in the back yard he was carving toy guns with just a pocket knife that look amazing, well at least to a 3-year-old boy (me). He made a revolver that the cylinder turned on it. He made two long rifles that also looked real for a carving. It is one of the only times I remember my father not yelling at me or calling me stupid. He just didn’t have the patience with me as he did my brother because he had gotten older and wore himself out with all the neighborhood boys on the baseball teams.

I understand how hard I was on him now, but it did hurt as a small boy that looked up to him and loved him that had no concept of age and tolerance. I see him in me with my grandson when I have had to deal with him one on one. I mean well and so did my father but we are a product of our upbringing I hope that becoming a US Marine will break the cycle of this for my grandson's sake.

My mother on the other hand got me, and did everything she could for me and even took on two couches and a principle on my behalf in a battle over “The Airways Jr. High Great Side Burn Scandal of 1974”.

The year I left to go to Canada, I first went to see my Grandfather Whitehead and spent the night with him. That was the last time I got to talk with him or saw him. He told me his favorite story of a date he had with the prettiest girl he had ever seen (before our Grandmother Whitehead, of course).  He rode his mule into town and went with her to a picture show(remember this would have been in the 1890s to the early 1900s). A person who knew him stopped him on his way home after the show and told him that the girl was a black girl and he said he didn’t know what to say or do, but he knew he could not see her anymore. Very sad I thought, but life is sad sometimes if we don't try to make it better.

I have been sitting here with my memories, Crying and laughing at the best of times and the worst of times. I’m glad that I’m at the age that even the worst was pretty good!

Thanks for reading the ramblings of an old man's little life!