Welcome,
Have you ever thought about what life would be like without all of the sounds that we take for granted? Phones, cars, television, planes, air conditioning, and motors all make a peculiar noise. Are there days when just the sirens of rescue units stress you out?
Do you sometimes feel that you would enjoy spending just one day outside in warm sunshine listening to the sounds of gurgling streams and birds chirping in the trees?
What about the smells around about you? Have you ever thought about the odors that you take for granted because they are part of your life and so familiar to you? Do you know that they are very different than the ones our grandparents experienced? Homemade bread and wood burning in the stove were part of their daily life. Have you ever smelled soil rich with forest loam right after a warm spring rain?
Once, I asked my grandfather what he missed most in his life that his grandparents had taken for granted as being part of their own. He never hesitated an instant before he replied. Lumber was the single word he uttered with such emotion that it startled me.
Seeing my reaction, he went on to explain that his grandfather had a true understanding of the forest which he had never been able to share because his father never saw the value in his learning about any of it. It had become possible in his own father's lifetime to go to a sawmill and order whatever kind of lumber needed to build a house or to lay a floor. His grandfather had gained his knowledge of timber from working with past generations of his family.
My grandfather went onto say that his grandfather could tell the board feet in any tree from simply looking at it as it stood in the forest. To know the quality and usable board feet of lumber in a tree before it was cut was a skill that my grandfather was sorry that he had never had the opportunity to learn. It was a skill that he was unable to pass down to members of his own family.
A drastic new way of life emerged during my grandfather's lifetime. As a young man he traveled by horseback and yet, before his death he sat in his own home and watched a man land upon the moon. Within his lifetime the telegraph was replaced by telephones, radios and television. He remembered a time when all consumed food was produced at home. Electricity and indoor plumbing were marvelous inventions that had became part of his own life which his own grandparents would never have believed possible.
Indeed much has changed in just the past few generations. Have you ever given thought as to what some of these changes may have made in the life of your own family?
I do hope that you will join me as we travel back in time to the days of not so long ago and explore all facets of life as it was lived by our families.
Until next time,
Billie Jo
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