wFrom:  Ken Kalish

wtDate:  August 5, 2013

Subject:  Writing for Ourselves

You refer, of course, to the absence of seat belts in our cars and of drinking water from steam we were fishing, right?

Ken

wFrom:  Frank Rogers

wtDate:  August 5, 2013

Subject:  Writing for Ourselves

We rode on a board laid across the back of a pickup truck.  We drank from the creek and upstream found a dead cow.  We "swam" in a deep hole in the creek and later a high school boy shot a crow, put it in a trap and got two big turtles to make soup at the American Legion post.  Luckily, we didn't lose any "appendages."  I stopped "swimming" in the creek when I looked up and every overhanging branch had a big, brown snake on it.  It's a miracle we didn't get ourselves killed, or worse, every day of the week.  Kids today with their iPads, etc don't know what they're missing.

Frank

wFrom:  Ken Kalish

wtDate:  August 5, 2013

Subject:  Writing for Ourselves

They aren’t “missing” anything, they’re just not living. Lord, it was fun jumping off that big rock -- right up until we learned it was a snapper.  Rock salt as a reward for stealing melons.  Finding arrowheads where there never was supposed to have been a battle.  Making willow spears with which to stab brook trout in foot-wide streams.  Helping your uncle skin out a poached deer so the “po folks” down the road wouldn’t starve.  Eating sweet, fat strawberries we just don’t see any more.  Chopping weeds in the bean patch.  Getting a pine snake caught up in the push mower and being afraid to pull it out.  The neighbor kids setting a cat on fire and having it run into the barn.  Learning the difference between a “legal” turtle and one you should let go just because it was older than your great-grandpa.  Smelling apple pies on Christmas Morning, baked by the hard oak you brought in on Christmas Eve.  Helping grandpa “chop chickens.”  Being ten and judged man enough to drink sweet berry wine after a hot day haying.  Wearing leather chaps and long gloves to toss bales, because you knew there were rattlers in them.  Watching a cow die from snakebite.  Learning not to pee near (or on) an electric fence.  Discovering the old blow-hard down by the park really was there, but not until he died and the town buried him for free.  Refusing to pay thirty dollars for a Civil War rifle you knew was only ninety years out of service.  Watching meter maids patrol in Cushmans.  Kicking the irrigation pipes to make sure the rattlers left before you moved them on the sugar beet fields.  Sitting on top of an ancient Buick with a bucket of water and a sandpaper block to get the car ready for painting.  Paying a dime for a hamburger.  Believing in America before the cardboard patriots and Joe McCarthy added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.  Watching the sheriff’s “bubble-gum machine” light  pull in behind the car that just left the A&W without paying for the five-cent mugs and the ten-cent fries.  Watching outdoor movies.

Nah.  Technology began cheating them out of their heritage a long, long time ago.

Ken

wFrom:  Joe Ciokon

wtDate:  August 5, 2013

Subject:  Cleaning up E-mail

Alright, knock it off!!

JoeC

wFrom:  Ken Kalish

wtDate:  August 4, 2013

Subject:  Cleaning up E-mail

Frank, Joe!  You’re into self-flagellation?  I wish I had known earlier.  There was a woman we called “Tiger Lady” in Cholon …

Ken

wFrom:  Frank Rogers

wtDate:  August 4, 2013

Subject:  Cleaning up E-mail Joe,

My brothers and I have been writing events of our young days "Back Then" for our grandchildren.  They find it hard to believe some of what went on, what we did, how we lived.

Frank

wFrom:  Joe Ciokon

wtDate:  August 4, 2013

Subject:  Cleaning up E-mail

After fourteen years, the museum is on freewheeling.  Loving it.  Enjoying more quality time with family.  The kids want to know more about my and our family histories.  I’m being bombarded with questions.  I hope I have enough time left to put it all on paper.  We owe it to them to leave a journal.  Dang it, we wrote for everyone else.  We know how to do this.  Self flagellation over.

JoeC

Writing for Ourselves

August 2013

As well as for our children and our grandchildren.

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