An Aging Process

I’m back to reading on Kindle and although I haven’t yet finished it, am reading Boys for Men. The author, a Vietnam vet, had read a friend’s ancestor’s account of joining the army in 1876 in Montana and becoming part of the group involved in the battle we know as “Custer’s Last Stand.” (Obviously, the fellow who wrote the journal wasn’t with Custer)

At any rate, the vet who had wanted to write a memoir of his time in Vietnam, decided to write parallel accounts of his friend’s ancestor’s war experience and his own. To add to the interesting parallels was the fact that the two men’s experiences occurred about 100 years apart as the author served in ‘Nam in 1970. 

This book was of added interest to me because I possess a copy of my great-great-grandfather’s account of his experience as a teenaged soldier in the Union Army in 1863. The comparison of the three men’s experiences during day to day life has a common thread: totally boring and pretty much horrible. The only soldier who mentions having any favorable days is the soldier in 1876 and I credit most of that to the fact that he was marching through Montana.

The Civil War soldier and the Vietnam vet both suffered with horrible food, horrible sleeping arrangements, and all three soldiers appeared to have had idiots for commanding officers. (I know, they might have been prejudiced, but…)

Boys for Men is based on the premise that boys are sent to war to do a man’s job, and that was certainly the case for my Civil War ancestor. The author mentions that many in his platoon were teenagers and he was only twenty-one or so. Despite that, the boys got the job done (can’t discount the men who were also present), and if they lived through the battles, they became men in spite of it all.

It didn’t hit me until mid-week that this had to be the weekend to write about this book since Memorial Day is almost upon us. So, in honor,of all the boys, men and women who fought for freedom throughout the history of our country—I salute you! Thank you for your sacrifice.

The Day the Sky Fell

During my visit to Kansas City the first of May, my family took me to Union Station to see the Pompeii Exhibit. Ordinarily, one would have to visit the museum in Naples, Italy to see these artifacts. However, the museum is renovating the wing housing the items so instead of storing them in a warehouse, the Italians boxed them up and sent them on tour to three American cities, including Kansas City.

Pompeii was a wealthy city of 11,000 mostly Roman people. This city, along with several others were located at the base and flanks of Mt. Vesuvius. At the time of the disaster, the volcano had been giving warning of subterranean cataclysm via earth tremors, smoke and steam. In fact seventeen years earlier Pompeii had suffered a major earthquake  they were still recovering from in 79 AD All (Wikipedia has a great article on Pompeii.)

When Vesuvius finally blew her top, Pompeii’s neighboring city of Herculaeneiu and its population were covered with lava but the inhabitants of Pompeii were overcome by poisonous gases which they could not outrun and everything and everyone was covered with a fine ash. According to Wikipedia, 2,000 people died, actually succumbing to heat of 250 degrees rather than suffocation). I'm not sure how the other 9,000 escaped--maybe they were out of town:)

Seeing the actual forms of people trying to protect themselves from the choking ash and heat is extremely sobering as you can tell from this picture of a person praying.

The beauty of the gardens and the pristine condition of the ceramic vases rescued was superb. Because the city was buried under 13-20 feet of volcanic ash the buildings, artifacts and skeletons were preserved almost intact. This gives us a fascinating window into the lives of the Roman world at that time.

Villa Garden

Ceramic vases in near-perfect condition

The entire catastrophe makes me think of the frog that was boiled alive. The people of Pompeii had plenty of warning the area in which they lived was not conducive to their health, but they ignored them,                                                     it, thinking life would go on as it always had.

(This jewelry was found on a woman holding a child along with others who had taken refuge under a stairway--obviously a family of great wealth.)

I was awed by the exhibit but saddened. The plight of those people is a frightening example of doing the ostrich thing—hiding one’s  head in the sand. An ironic  factoid: these folks had just celebrated a feast to the god, Vulcan, the day before Vesuvius blew. Almost makes me think God, the Creator, had finally had enough!

Cousins, Cousins, Cousins

My mother, who took pictures of any and every type of family gathering, is probably turning over in her grave (not reallyJ I just spent a week plus back in Missouri visiting family and friends and have almost no pictures to show for it!

Bob and Lynda, my brother and sister-in-law, kindly housed, fed and pampered me while I was in Kansas City. And, my sweet brother drove me everywhere I had scheduled to visit many cousins of various levels of kinship as well as classmates

We began our travels by visiting a first cousin on our Dad’s side of the family. Marjory had done a lot of genealogy work on various sides of her family and that day she helped us discover tidbits of information re: our maternal great-great grandmother. I was very grateful because my next novel will be based on the life of this ancestor.

Two days later we headed for the Hannibal area, that city being the birthplace of both Bob and me. After a fun time eating lunch with classmates in Palmyra, a nearby town, Bob and I toured the local cemetery and with help, found the Reber grave markers as well as related folks. Bob had spent his lunch hour looking through Land Records at the local courthouse and felt like he’d hit pay dirt there

It was soon time to check in to our motel and eat dinner with more cousins. These folks were all third cousins through our mother’s  maternal grandmother. In other words, our great-grandmothers were sisters. My brother would be eating dinner with a group of people he swore he’d never met. (He didn’t remember them because he was a five-year-old when we left the Hannibal area.)

However, I was renewing acquaintances with friends, most of whom I’d not seen for fifty plus years. I had attended a country school, grades 1-4 with one batch of these cousins and had attended church each week with the other batch. (Oh, I forgot to mention, the two families of cousins I’m referring to are double first cousins.) If anyone is still reading to this post, I imagine you are thoroughly confused. At any rate, it was a delightful evening, even for my brotherJ and I’m grateful to cousin Mervin for arranging it.

The next day found us on the road again to rural Marion county near Palmyra to the home of our mother’s first cousin on her father’s side. It turns out that our grea-great-grandfather Reber was a Union soldier while our great-great-grandfather Triplett fought for the Confederacy. My brother is writing a novel based on a Civil War battle and knew that these cousins had done considerable genealogy work on their family ancestors. It was good to see Jack and Mary again as well as their son, Keith and we gained good information from the visit.

Our next stop was a lunch hosted by my school friend from country school days. Some cousins from the previous evening’s dinner were present since, with the exception of Bob and me, they had all gone to country school together at one location or another. Friends/relatives from the Hannibal area, Kansas City, Illinois, Maryland, and Nevada were represented in that that little group of seven .

I’m writing all of this family “stuff” to say that family is precious, even to the third and fourth generations. God ordained the family back in the very beginning and I truly thank Him for mine.