Since these posts are based on my memories I was fascinated by a TED speech on The Fiction of Memory and decided that I should provide a link to it. I think my memories are true, but that’s the problem. It is difficult to know whether memories are true or false.
One of the Old Keep-sake Cards in the box: A Winter Scene
This winter weather brings memories of winters past. A hill separated our house and the school bus. I usually walked a road around the hill, but one morning in 1932 which was my first year of school at age 6, my brother chose the shorter route by going up the hill. Taking hold of my hand he dragged me on my back through the snow as he went. Six years later I needed to go alone up the hill. This time the crusted snow was deep enough for me to go over the fence as I went. I don’t remember this, but I know it was my mother who helped to dress me warmly against the cold and helped me pull on my boots. My mother would do that, not Aunt Lizzie.
Notice the fine script on the lower rim of the picture
School was important to my mother. She went to the Grand Point School in Greene Township in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. The teacher was Frank Miller, responsible for each of the eight grades in the one room school.
Most of the Old Keep-sake Cards were merit cards from my mother’s teacher. I like his rewards for good work. She spoke highly to me of her teacher.
CLICK ON THE CARD TO MAKE IT MORE LEGIBLE
Other cards were even more personal cards friends and relatives and Easter and Christmas cards. There was an Easter wish to the boy who became my father. He was in the Chambersburg Hospital with a severely fractured leg from a farm accident. Later in life he entertained children by lifting his pant leg and revealing to them the hidden crooked leg.
This card was sent to my father in the hospital by his brother, Rueben
I asked an elderly man at Menno Haven if he knew my father as a boy. He said, I knew your father but I never talked to him. I knew his buggy and we waved when we passed on the road, I recognized him as one of the boys who stood in front of the Marion Mennonite Church, and I was there when they brought him to the train depot and carried him off in the ambulance.
