Before leaving Arkansas Mike and I made one more attempt to find the road to my grandparent’s farm. Using Google Maps we found the Caddo River and the bridge that crosses it. As soon as we saw it I knew that we were on the right track. It was just as I remembered it. It seemed to be a place suspended in time. The old wooden bridge will one day be gone. Little is left of it but enough to bring back such fond memories. It was so peaceful there. The crystal clear water looked clean enough to drink. Of course we knew better than to try it without some form of filtering. I learned that important lesson from my grandmother long ago and from all of our more recent backpacking adventures. I wanted to just sit along the banks in that quiet place and tarry for a long while but we didn’t have the time. Continue reading “Kentucky Kinfolk”
As children we aren’t usually much interested in learning about relatives from long ago. Thus it was with me. My father died long before I began to have questions about his grandparents and aunts and uncles. I imagine that he had a wealth of information but that went away with his death. His mother, my Grandma Minnie, sometimes attempted to provide me with a few details about her heritage but I much preferred her stories about birds and the other critters that she understood so well. The result was that I grew up knowing very little about the people who had come before me. 
Mike and I have embarked on the biggest tour that we have ever taken in our trailer. It is a very special trip centering around a visit with our eldest grandson, Andrew, at Purdue University. We’ll see him this coming Saturday in conjunction with the annual Family Weekend. We decided to plan our route so that it goes through Arkansas and Kentucky because much of the family history of my father’s ancestors played out in those states. We are hoping to locate the grave sites of my great grandfather, great grandmother, and my great great grandmother. It will be quite an adventure. 
Like everyone I was a bit solemn on Friday, September 11. I will never forget that horrific day of fourteen years ago when it seemed as though we were in the midst of a nightmare that not even Stephen King might have imagined. I remember wondering if the world that I had always known would ever be the same. In some ways I have to admit that it is not exactly as it had been before. The trouble with terror is that it does strange things to the mind. Even though we have essentially gone about our routines for the last fourteen years deep inside our psyches is a kind of fear that did not exist prior to the terrible event that we all witnessed. We want to be our old optimistic selves but that day has taught us to beware.
When I was eight years old my favorite stories were fairytales and I really and truly believed that they were real. My beliefs were reinforced when I attended my first wedding. My eldest cousin, Leonard, was marrying a beautiful young woman named, Jeanne. The two of them seemed as close to being a prince and princess as any couple that I had ever seen. 
