Life Story

I read the blog Bookpuddle on a regular basis. As a guy who loves to read, why not read a blog about reading books? Lots of the stuff Cipriano reads and reviews is exactly the stuff I don't read but that's why I read it, if that makes any sense at all. Expanding my horizons and all that.

Last Sunday, Cipriano did a post about the lady who cat sits for him when he's on vacation. It's an interesting little story about the life of the woman and it got me to thinking about life story's. We've all got them, some are interesting, as is the cat sitting lady's, and some aren't. Some are heroic and some are tragic. I wrote about my uncle Pete a few days ago and his was an interesting life story. He grew up in the Dakotas, ended up in the Midwest, went to war twice, married and had a family, and ended up owning his own welding shop. Maybe not the stuff of the great American novel but with Pete, the telling of the story was every bit as good as the story itself.

I had the great good fortune of spending quite a bit of time with my maternal grandmother. After my grandpa died, I used to take her to the grocery store and stay for dinner with her. I got to hear much of her life story. When she and Grandpa married they left the farm in Kentucky and headed north like so many others. Her mother died when Grandma was very young so she was raised by an older sister and a black woman whose parents were slaves. She might have been at one time as well, Grandma was born only about thirty-five years after the Civil War was over. When they went to church, they had to sit in the back because Grandma was with the black woman. Grandma's grandfather Henry was killed by Confederate soldiers even though the Henry's were slaveholders. The Confederates came to the Henry farm to get horses and shots were fired. The Confederates left only to return later and either shot or hung David Henry in his front yard. In retaliation for killing a prominent civilian, four Confederate prisoners were chosen at random from Louisville and taken to Meade County where they were executed.

I used to razz Grandma about taking a ride on my motorcycle and she'd always say, "One of these days". One day I asked her and she took me up on the offer. She just hiked up the old house dress and jumped on. I spun her around the block and when she got off said, "I always wanted to try one of those".

There was a woman who had a life story. I'm glad I got to hear it.