More stories

Stories come whether we expect them or not.  Yesterday, I had a long, long chat with Gary's 89 year old aunt Shirley, who told me some of the family history, and a lot of the family gossip.  Gary's family has lived on the same farm since 1848 and in the same house since 1884.  That's a lot of stories to digest.  She has the genealogy, but that doesn't include the stories about each person listed, and those are what I wanted to hear.

There was the scandal of the hired man living in the same house as a spinster aunt.  She was decades older than he (she was born in 1858) but in the early part of the 20th century, that was the neighborhood scandal.  How times have changed!

There were stories about horses, because this was once a farm where trotting horses were bred.  We talked about the German migration of the year 1848, which had to do with the European revolutions of the time.  Young men migrated to escape being conscripted into the Kaiser's army.  In other words, his ancestors, and mine as well, came to escape the draft.

This was a highly educated family for its time.  Gary's great-great aunts were college graduates who became chemists and teachers.

I heard stories about Gary and the mischief he got into.  I looked at  a century's worth of year books, obituaries, wedding and birth announcements and more.

Some of what I heard will work its way into some of my novels and short stories, some will be written down for Gary and his family, and some will reside in my brain to be pulled out for farm stories to be told in nursing homes.

Nothing I learned will be wasted.