Monday, January 21, 2008

Yesteryear's Tales

INTRODUCTION

History is mainly lived by the unknown and on more occasions than we would like to admit, the unknown in our own history. But, some things and parts of our stories are known to us, those who love them, possess their DNA, their history.

Unfortunately, history moves forward on a written record, those who might have left something. For our family, the record is pretty scant, make that like almost non existent. Our family left very little in terms of the written word. Why is simply an unanswerable question. Mostly, it had to do with the survival mode they were in. With six kids, attempting to eek out an existent on a farm, not even their own, there was no time for cogitating one’s navel. Survive is the mentality of the day.

It is mostly memory and memory from those left behind and in the peculiar way they can remember. It is someone like us asking the questions, attempting to figure it out--the way we lived our lives, if you will.

A memoir is really about an experience, in some wonderful way, putting on paper memory, interspersed with not a little speculation but just as meaningful. Part of the real difficulty is the question always: is what we are saying the truth, our opinion, just giving the facts, What! This is very hard.

Someone has said and I surely don’t know who, all writing is invention. Meaning I guess that it came out of someone’s head. What we have is some raw material and we’re trying to tell a story. Everybody has a story. Our folks surely had one and we’re trying to piece it together so we can know our story. We opt for the truth.

Our Mom, for example, was this incredibly strong woman. She didn’t dwell on such things as she was putting food on the table, nursing her kids to health and life. She didn’t think about her story. We do.

We are not out to recite actual events as much as share in our family’s experience as they saw it. And, also, it was the "times" in which they lived, which is no small thing. In our story, more than anything, there’s an experience and we’re out to capture it. If we are successful, we capture our own story. Our goal is to arrive at our family’s history which is about who we are.

Our stories are ones with meaning in capturing our little niche in one very small corner of America. It is how we lived when the mundane of the mule and horse were king and queen and mostly our world. It is also about one little segment of life which was divided by haves and have nots—the have nots made up the greater percentage of our little niche. The haves, either inherited their wealth or got it off the backs of the have nots. For us, it was a time of Landlords who owned the land and tenants who farmed it for them.

Our life situations demanded that we have a sense of humor and an indomitable will or be prepared to face a future with no more possibility than our parents.

This is our story of one family and the life they shared with their parents, brothers, sister and more kinfolks than space will permit. And, we want to tell it just so we will know. Let the journey begin.

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