2005 Year in Review

After returning home from a family reunion back “home”, in August 2005, I was a little down. Up because I saw an aunt there who I had not seen in several years, and up because I renewed some old family acquaintances that I had not seen in quite some time. But I was down, because here I was back in my daily routine, knowing that sooner or later I’d “forget” the important stuff, yet again. I don’t so much “forget” but put it on the back burner for a time.

There were other thoughts on my mind, things at work and in life that were pulling me down, and that thought – that image, of my Dad and my uncles sitting on the old front porch of my uncle’s home, or sitting out on the lawn chairs in front of our house, rolling Prince Albert cigarettes and whiling away the hours telling stories about when they were young.

There are bits and pieces, here and there that I can remember. Like, down past the old homeplace, where the road always crossed through the creek (until a year or two ago, when the county finally put in a bridge over those waters), there are still the few remains of a wooden fence that stretched along the bank, between the creek and the road.

In my childhood, this creek was the home of many an hour of wading, and searching for crawdads, running from snakes and finding all sorts of other adventures. Here and there along the way we’d find a tree that might have fallen over the creek, and we could pretend to be explorers, crossing a raging river by balancing ourselves as we slowly walked across the trunk of that tree, over the waters of the creek (and, truth be told, the water was only a few inches to a few feet deep – and no way we could have drowned.. but that truth would have spoiled the adventure – it was much more fun to pretend that we were crossing a deep ravine with a wild river running underneath).

But, in their childhood, that fence, whose few remaining slats are separated by inches of space as the boards have slowly shriveled and disintegrated over time, served a different purpose. In their days, the creek beyond was wider and deeper than now. The area beyond the fence was a bathing area, a swimming area. The fence served as a privacy fence while family members bathed. I could almost close my eyes and imagine the fence, with no space between the boards, with clothes hanging off it as the ladies bathed and the men waited, or vice-versa.

A little ways up from there, a tree had fallen over the creek, but partially down in the water. The stories were told that over time, the waters rushed under the log to cut out the bottom of the creek, making quite a deep hole – I think they called it the “blue hole”. By the time I came around, that blue hole was no more, but we had our own adventures.

I don’t “remember” their memories. I don’t even remember most of their stories. It’s been 20 years, this past November, since my Dad passed on, and only another year or two until my Uncles were all gone, as well. I was 14 when he died, and one of my regrets is that nobody ever took the time to record those stories. The voices are still now, but memories remain. Mine. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to be enough.

As an adult, I had the best of intentions – to “interview” my grandparents and mother and get them to tell some of their stories on a video camcorder, and have those memories forever. But, we never quite got around to it, and a couple of years ago, my Grandfather was taken to meet his Creator, and another source of memories was gone.

But, back to the present. After returning home from our family reunion, with these thoughts and others causing so much turbulence upstairs in my noggin, I had the thought that I should start doing “something”. Somehow, I decided maybe I should start writing down my stories. I didn’t want to tell them – naming names – in a way that other people’s feelings were hurt. I decided to make them anonymous. I am not sure where the names of Armadillo Creek or Johnny Miller came from - they just sounded "right".

At first, I didn’t tell my friends, or family. I just started to write. After a while, I mentioned the site where I was posting these stories to on my “regular” blogging site, but that was the only mention I made of it to anyone. Over time, a few new “friends” have been found who like the world presented here, and for that, I am thankful.

Only now is my family becoming aware that I am the author of these tales. I am creating a “2005” version of these, in a Word document format, for those members of my family who are not “online”, like my Grandmother and Mother. As the new year comes, I do plan to continue occasionally adding stories to the site, and maybe, next year, I can do a “2006” document/book.
I hope you enjoy these tales, as much as I have enjoyed writing them. I do hope that anyone who is intimately familiar with my childhood realizes that these stories are not completely accurate – but rather just represent my memories as I remember remembering them. That is, I tried to capture the thoughts and emotions of the time – rather than my later memories. This is hard to do, because as we grow older we “learn” things that slant our views and perceptions and now we look back and see things in a different light. I have tried to capture the innocence of the moment as much as possible.

I hope that maybe, somewhere, someone else may be inspired to tell tales of their younger days. There IS an audience out there, of young ears that want to hear, to know, what life was like "back in the day".

I hope everyone has had a wonderful 2005 Christmas Season, and I wish you a Happy New Year.

Uncle Ed
Dec 29, 2005