As I recall growing up in the 1950's and the enjoyment of learning to rabbit hunt, and watching the dogs to determine if they are on a cold trail, or if the rabbit has been through the area within the last hour. What a shame, times have changed, young boys of today do not know of this excitement.
Although the holiday in mid February is named for St. Valentine, the celebration is actually a replacement for a Roman Pagan festival. For eight hundred years prior, it was a practice observing the right of passage for young men to Lupercus, the Roman god of agriculture and shepherds.
We all enjoy having relatives visit; it gives us an opportunity to catch up on what's going on in each others lives. It is even more special when that relative has the ability to bring the past back to life.
The loneliness faded away amid the imaginative workings she created and often she fell fast asleep, buttons in hand, dreaming of a special someone who would come to share her special world.
In 1989, while asleep, Milton J. Long, LTC AUS RET, received this message from his guardian angel. "You have wished for a WWII jeep, and this would be fulfilled. You must restore it and show it. You are to tell the story of its use in WWII, and show it in parades and events." The angel also advised that he would receive financial help with the project.
Hoyt Sherman Griffith, Jr. was born in 1926 in Philadelphia, the great-grandson of General William T. Sherman's younger brother, Hoyt Sherman. His family was adventurous and curious about everything, and I knew that young Hoyt's parents had transported him back and forth across the continent several times before he entered the seventh grade. Sure enough, my tale of finding a wonderful bed-and-breakfast opened up his memory.
The farmers would get together and build a log house, say 18 feet x 20 feet. There were no floors in the house, benches made of 8-inch poplar logs split in two, with wooden pegs for legs served as seats.
The house was not supplied with windows. At convenient distances chinks were left out from between logs, through which the light and cold wind could enter.
Remember when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger. And with all our progress ... don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace ... and share it with the children of today ... When being sent to the principals office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home.
People that live on a farm, or in rural areas, understand the fun of hunting in the great outdoors, once said to be the "Sport of kings," it's a sport that's hard to explain to a city dweller, they lack the ability to comprehend what the sound of a full throated "Bay" of a good Black and Tan coon dog sounds like. A hunter knows the sound of his dog's "Bay," even though that dog is miles away, it's like the drama and music of an opera, and that sound carries over hills and mountains as the hunter rushes to his dog's location.
Food was passed right to left and left to right amid polite requests of "potatoes please," "pass the peas," and "may I have the gravy." If the adults were deep in conversation they merely accepted the dish coming at them with a nudge on their sleeve and then passed it to the person on the other side until it reached its destination. Several of my uncles were passionately bent on many subjects and with the dinner wine following the cocktails were generally deeply into their subjects by suppertime. Given the nudge they would accept the proffered dish, not break stride in their dissertations on whatever topic and attempt to pass it to the next person.