memory keepers

I was watching Antique Roadshow.

I know, but there is not too much going on here in this evening, and I did read a book today.

Someone came to the Roadshow with a coat that they thought came from the Civil War. Turned out it was made just after the war for the Confederate Veterans.

Which got me to thinking of my great great grandfathers, who were alive during the civil war era.

One was an officer with the Union Army, one was a soldier in the Confederate Army, I don’t actually know what the third was doing during that time, but he probably was in the war somehow, and he was from the south and the right age.

But tonight I was thinking of my mother’s grandfather. There was a war going on between his country and the one next door. That is between Germany and Denmark, Grandpa Jens home.

Guess he was not really mad at the Germans. Any way, he copped the draft (I think there was one) and came to America. He sent for his girl friend later.

I remember Grandpa Jens. He came to live with my grandmother (his daughter) for a while when I was young. Earlier, during what Grandpa Howard (grandmother’s husband) would always call the “hard times” and what we would call “The Great Depression” Grandpa Jens came to Idaho, bought a few acres on the edge of Boise and seriously grew vegetables which Grandpa Howard sold door to door to the better homes in the area.

It wasn’t a big living, but it did keep the wolf away during those rough times.

My friend Charlie is a fish biologist. He has been invited to talk this week about what has happened in the fish farming industry in the last 50 years. Those are the years he was working in the fish business.

We are the old guys, the keepers of the memories, if they are kept at all.