On So Much Info, So Little Time:

I had a really good time listening to my father’s tales of when he was younger.

He used to go the dump where the factories would get rid of miss-made products and regularly get pink pencil erasers for school by the pounds, along with a variety of other things that he and his friends or family could use.

I learned that my grandfather was a professional Roller Derby skater for a time.

And that my uncle, when he was in the navy, was stationed on the aircraft carrier ‘Enterprise’ before and during World War II.

(For those of you who don’t know. The ‘Enterprise’ was the most decorated ship of that war, if not ever. Wikipedia link here. History Channel link here. Battle 360 links here.)

Now I know where my father got all those scars from. My father was attacked by dogs more than once. Most were minor leg bites while delivering news papers.

But the worst one: My father, in his own back yard when he was only about 8 years old, was attacked by a dog and bitten 11 times before his brother managed to hit the dog with a hammer to get it off of him. He has a long, jagged scar that goes from the corner of his eyebrow and over his head, along with others he wouldn‘t talk about when we were kids.

There were tales of misadventure along with childish bad judgment. But he and the others survived those days of not enough to go around. They made it to adulthood and some of the old group still meet a few times a year even though the group gets smaller each year.

He may be the last of his family’s generation. His brothers and sisters are all gone now and his parents died when I was a child.

So he tells the tales that only he is left to pass down to the generations he has fathered and grandfathered hoping that some of those stories will live on when he is gone. It is family history and it should not get lost.