Looking back

  Went looking for a few things I know that I have in the attic, you know how you do. My grandson Mark just purchased a home. Hard to believe that time has moved that far along. Congratulations to Mark and Bailey, homeowners. So anyway, I was looking for a few things I intended to give them for their new home and started rooting around. I do have years of memories stored up there. I did find the items I was looking for. While doing that I stumbled upon a bunch of other things I had forgotten about and brought me a smile or two. I remember that. Was the latest high tech at the time now a dusty relic. But I sat that stuff back on the shelf or left it tucked away in the box or tote where I found it. 

 While doing that I also discovered some papers, some documents from the past. Amused I posted one such finding on Facebook. From 1986 I uncovered documents making me a Tennessee county Squire and owner of a plot of land in Jack Daniels hollow. Exactly how I came to obtain all of that I can't remember for certain. I must have mailed something in is my guess. Remember there was no internet at that time, no going online. I have those documents in the cardboard mailer that I received them in. It cost Jack Daniels company $1.41 to mail them to me. I also found a certificate where I had completed Navy Recruiter training. One certificate was issued independently of that from a university, a forty-hour course in persuasive communications. That's what they called influencing back then. I remember that course. 

 After doing that I was thinking about what others might deduce from the documents I have around the house. What I'm thinking about is someone putting my life together without any input from myself or others. It's something I have attempted to do while working on the family tree. It is the most interesting part of that process in fact. assembling a life, from the documents and artifacts. I have found a few things of my dad's that were surprising, that I hadn't known about. He attended an Evinrude Outboard Motor factory training course. He had perfect attendance at Church School in 1939. In his photo album from his time in the war where pictures of other women, women that weren't my mother. Imagine that; dad dating and interested in other women. 

 Just before I retired from the Navy, I make a complete copy of my service record and my medical record. Technically you are not supposed to do that, but I'm a rebel. I had heard about records being lost or destroyed. That could prove to be a big loss if those records were ever needed. You just never know. So, I have those records stored away in a briefcase I used while I was a recruiter. Lots of information in there and some of it quite personal, will make for a valuable find if anyone is interested. Then there are these blogs of mine. I'm told they will remain on a server somewhere supposedly forever. My descendants could search for and retrieve them if they were so inclined. Would give them a picture of what I was like and the way I thought about things. But yesterday after finding those documents, certificates or whatever I realized there was more to discover. I also realized how easily one could be misled by what they find without explanation. 

 In 1986 I was thirty three years old and in the Navy. An old salt by then. Yes, Jack Daniels whiskey was a part of my social life, and a sign to others that I was a real man. There were others at that time smoking pot, a rather new and hip thing to do, but illegal. Even the cowboys were smoking that stuff by 1986. I remember how some had a clip with feathers hanging off of them as "ornaments" on their cowboy hats. It was cool, and a sign to others that you were cool too. I wasn't into that; I was a whiskey man. Funny how things like that go. Today it's rainbow flags or whatever I suppose. It is whatever is hip at the time. Most of what I knew the Navy to be in that regard I'm certain has changed quite a bit. A great number of the good natured, pick on the new guy stuff that I experienced is called hazing today and frowned upon. I was in the Navy when you weren't supposed to ask or tell. Now I don't remember the last time I had a drink of Jack. I'm still a squire though, still own land in the hollow. I had almost forgotten that. Well, that's one of the benefits of aging, you get to relive some of the past. Then you can smile and say, what was I thinking?