A win/win day

I spent the afternoon with my uncle and aunt.

Remember when talking to your living ancestors who personally knew your deceased ancestors that less is more.

The last thing you want to do is bombard them with questions. Today, my goal was to learn a little more about my great grandfather. So I asked my uncle if he remembered Oscar. He did. I let him talk. I listened.

By allowing him to go where his memories wanted to take him, I learned something that could prove to be a gold mine. My great grandfather loved to take pictures. It's up to me to find those pictures that he took. But they exist somewhere.

I also learned my great grandfather was too much for the local hospital to handle at times and they'd call my grandfather and have him come get his dad.

I knew where my dad, aunt and uncle were born. I knew where they were raised. It was two different places a mile apart. They moved from the house where all the kids were born to the house where they'd be raised in August of 1929. My grandmother died November of 1929. In between their move and her death, was the stock market crash of 29. A very emotional few months and life changing months for my dad and his brother and sister.

I'd love to know more about my grandmother, but my uncle can't help me there. He was two when he lost his mother. My dad barely had memories of her and he was four at the time.

So I didn't go after those memories that I knew didn't exist. I didn't go after the stories about William and Mariah since it was confirmed early on in my visit that this side of the family doesn't talk about their ancestors. Yeah, I knew that. I've been a member of this family all my life.

No, what sunk into my thick skull today was the same chunk of land where I was raised is where my uncle was raised. I knew it, but yet I was surprised to hear him refer to it as the home place. I had to evaluate things for a few seconds. Home place? No, that's my home place, not yours. But the truth is, it was his home place first.

I don't know if they had both a south and east drive when they were raised there. Probably. Today there's only the south drive. The house set off the road a fourth of a mile. It was a nice walk. Go out the south drive, turn east, then turn north and get to the east drive and turn west. A nice mile walk. I can't count the number of times I made that walk throughout my years of growing up. With six of us kids there were times the only way to get alone time was to take that walk. Even then I enjoyed my own company.

I could plan, dream, curse, be whatever I wanted to be on those walks.

Today I learned my great grandfather used to walk by the home place almost every day. Summer, fall, winter and spring. He would walk from the original homestead to the place he bought while Mary, his wife, was still alive. The house was still there, but he didn't live there. The dad, uncle and aunt all kept an eye out waiting for their granddad to walk by.

There was a trunk that he kept there. He kept his cereal in his trunk. My great grandfather walked two miles from where he slept to where he used to live to eat his breakfast. Was it so he could spend his mornings with his memories of Mary? There is no way of knowing. Yet it says something about him. Maybe he just wanted to break his overnight fast alone. Without the noise of everyone who lived on the old homestead.

Not only did I learn about my great grandfather today, I also learned things about my uncle.

Today can only be summed up one way. This was a win/win day.