Companies keep telling us that they've got something
"NEW!", but I'm not so sure there's anything new under the sun. Everything is a variation on a theme, and
sometimes the old stuff is way cooler.
The latest IPad is just a chalkboard without the chalk. Might we be better off with the chalk?
I liked hula hoops for a while. I could hula hoop forever around my waist, long time on my leg,
even longer on my arm, a while on my neck.
I hula hooped 3 circles at a time making them spin in different orbits
on my waist, or a couple of limbs and a waist.
Geez, I was bored with nothing to do.
I showed off to Grandpa and fell down laughing when he hula hooped too.
Grandpa was born in the 1800s and was retired by the time I
was born. He was from a small town in
central Tennessee. Our family is
supposed to be related to Robert E. Lee, but folks down there make sure you
know that there are 2 Lee families in the area, the rich ones and us.
I tried to get Grandpa to talk about his growing up, but he
wasn't a story teller. He was a
doer. The rush seat of my child's chair
wore out? Grandpa wove a new one on it
with nylon cord. Durable. Cotton would've looked nicer, but nylon is
forever. Nobody would ever need to
weave a new seat for that particular chair.
He made lye soap that could take the skin off you. Effective.
Grandma used it for laundry and kids were threatened with that soap if
we got too dirty. I tried to stay clean
when we visited.
I got an unusual email this week. A woman wrote to say that she had my great grandfather's bed and
is willing to sell it. She said I was
the only one of the family she could locate, I'm guessing because I wrote about
my great aunt Ila Rhea on this blog.
Cool! A side benefit I never
expected from blogging. Any family
interested in the bed and dresser, let me know. I've asked how much they're asking, but don't have an answer
yet. The furniture is currently in
Florida, so you'd also have to figure out how to get it. (I suppose I shouldn't mention my naughty
wondering whether or not the owner of this bed has to do things Presbyterian
missionary style or S&M?) The
"history" referred to in the note is the genealogy that my great
grandfather wrote. If there's any
family that wants to read it, I've scanned it and can send it to you.
I suppose my great grandfather must've been studious to
write a genealogy. I know he wrote a
lot of letters in order to write it because that was before
ancestry.com. He was a mailman, riding
his horse around the county. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of
night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." I suppose he got all of that on a horse, but
I like to imagine that it was a good job for someone who liked to visit with
people.
I can't really say much about him since he was before my
time, but I imagine him a lot like his son, my grandpa. The kind of man who'd use nylon cord for a
child's seat, and who would do the twist with a hula hoop.
Note ~ Mom says the bed was part of a bigger bedroom set and was supposed to go to my grandpa, but he didn't know how to bring to Ohio so it was willed to Ila Rhea instead.
