Family history - what a trip

[wrench13]

My grandson will be 7 tomorrow, and I thought it might be a good time to introduce him to his great-great grandfather. I am in the unque position of being able to show him pictures and tell some stories about his Great-great grandfather. Pics of him and my brothers and I and his great-great-grandmother too. My brother has the pics, and I asked to jot down any anecdotes he remembers about them ( he lived with them for a while before they both passed away). I have a few, like the story of when his great-great-grandfather used to smuggle beer in a horse drawn wagon up Rt 9 in upstate New Your during Prohibition. Stuff like that. Family history gives one a sense of being grounded and a part of this great country we live in.

 

[Tami2]

Nice :smile049:

 

[Laurasea]

It's amazing how much the world has changed in just a few generations!! It's definitely important to pass on the family connection to the past it makes history more meaningful!
I try and share how box turtles, rabbits, dear , fox and skunks could be found in your own backyard, been ten years since I've seen any.... But then I'm a conservationist, and you are talking of family history, a wonderful thing to share

 

[wrench13]

Hey anything in this world that can be shared with others is a good thing, whether its family memories or ideas on conservation of species is a good thing, right? Funny you mentioning box turtles though. My brother and I are amature herpetologists. We cought 2 box turtles in our youthful past. One, female, out on Long Island, and one, a male, in Forest Part, in Queens, smack in the middle of New York City. Both were Eastern Box turtles. What was very surprizing is that they mated and produced a clutch of eggs, which we hatched and released, along with the parents, back into the Park.

Meanwhile no one has sighted a box turtle in NYC in at least 20 years.

I am glad you reminded me of that story, I think I will tell it to my grandson too, tomorrow night.

 

[Scott]

What a wonderful way for your grandson to learn history. Family pics and anecdotes will be far more interesting than a school lesson.

 

[Laurasea]

That's a great box turtles story.
I just read an article on disappearing eastern box turtle...
I hope you have a great time sharing with your grandson! Hope he has a wonderful birthday!!

 

[Betrisher]

I think it's brilliant that you're telling your grandson not only about his ancestors, but about your own youth. So often, it doesn't occur to parents to let their kids in on their own story. Sometimes, telling a story about the time you did something naughty or got yourself out of trouble or apologised when you were wrong can teach a much more lasting lesson than just 'do as I tell you'. I was lucky as a child. All my older relatives were storytellers and I have a wealth of old family tales locked away in my head. I've spent most of my adult life gradually writing them down, along with my own memories of growing up and setting out as a young adult.

For example, there was the time my Pop gave sixpence to his youngest son (my Dad, Frank) and told him to walk to the butcher's shop in Cook's Hill and buy a sixpenny bag of soup bones. It was the Depression and Nanna wanted to make a good nourishing soup for her six kids. Only the Cook's Hill butcher sold good, cheap, marrow-bones decent enough for making soup. Dad was only eleven and Cook's Hill was eight miles away.

As he wandered past the local butcher's shop just up the road from home, he read a sign in the window that assured him 'dog bones' could be bought for threepence a bag so, nothing ventured, he popped in and purchased a threepenny bag of dog bones. Needless to say, he then popped in to the grocer's and treated himself to threepence worth of sweeties.

Returning (smugly) at the end of the day, he handed the bag of bones to my Nanna, who let out a shriek (she knew immediately that there were dog bones, not soup bones in the bag). Pop took hold of the bag of bones and gave my Dad a hiding with it!

But yes. The soup was made from the dog bones and it was, as expected, awful! Poor Dad. He never quite lived that one down.

 

[dhraiden]

Stories are important. They do get distorted with the retelling sometimes, though. But what people lived through, how they felt, and the impact they had - these are important and worth remembering. I know a highlight reel of my Mom's life before me; alongside luckily having quite a few pictures to round out the telling and demonstrate the lady's beauty and intelligence. It was a good childhood, followed by a rough mid-life, marred by spite and ingratitude from siblings along the way and no small amount of abuse and trauma in the time around my birth. Fortunately in the three and a half decades since life has smoothed out for her by dint of a little luck and lots of hard work, even more saving, and smart investments. I don't prompt her for much story-telling since I know most by heart, and invariably whenever something negative sets her off she'll tell a relevant (or not) tale unprompted anyway, LOL. My Dad's tale is much more a mystery to me: he's never volunteered much beyond what comes out in the form of jokes and casual asides. For me it is enough to know what I do of their lives from "me, onwards", filling in the gaps with educated assumptions. We all three of us live very much in the present, presently, which is not a bad thing at all. I've only one living grandparent that I could go "to the source" for her original tellings, but at her very advanced age I don't think I could mine much, more's the pity. Enjoy your stories - enshrine your history, and most importantly, learn from them (no dog bones!)