Monday, June 28, 2010

The Old Fart - 69 for a month now...time flies

Today is the first monthly anniversary of my 69th birthday. Has it really been 69 years since May 28, 1941??? Man, we weren't even officially a part of WWII at the time. Europe was in turmoil, but we were into the isolationist attitude big time. Sell 'em stuff, but don't get involved.

I have to be honest in that I had no idea there was a war going on back in those days. As you can tell from the image below, I had no idea of anything that was happening.

Now every time I see my almost 5 month old grandson, I ponder those days and what it must have been like to bring a new baby into that crazy world. I'm sure it was a lot of fun as long as things went well. Many, many children died at an early age back then, before what we call modern medicine today.

Maybe in my hometown of Danville, Virginia it was life as usual. Many folks were working over at Dan River Mills turning all that cotton into some kind of cloth. I never really got a chance to embrace life in Danville, 'cause about that time my folks relocated to the Big Town of Savage and worked in the Savage Cotton Mill. I think the pay was a bit better up here and there were more, different types of jobs, especially during the war.

I don't recall much about those days, but I do get a bit nostalgic and wish I had someone left in the family to talk to about that period and what everyone was like back then. When we're young and have old folks around, we aren't interested in the old days. When we get old, it's too late; our old folks are gone.

I do remember that my grandmother had this white stuff that was mushy like butter and she had some yellowish coloring she mixed in with it. We used it like butter and since I didn't know what butter was back then, it didn't matter much anyway. I must say that I do love butter today...

Man, that was back during the war...time sure flies don't it,
JD

PS - Here's an image of the kid sitting high on the pole. They'd lock my parents up today for doing something like that, wouldn't they.

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