sonopan (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sonopan) wrote,@ 2008-05-11 16:40:00 |
|
Actually... it IS a big deal..
My knowledge of my ancestors is pretty slim, really. My mother’s family were dirt farmers and river men and they apparently lead pretty uneventful lives. My maternal grandmother died when my mother was 12 years old and she is almost unknown to me. Vessie, my mom’s father I know only from mental snapshots… short stories that don’t share enough connectivity to make a whole story… and most of those stories are from the period after my mother and father met. Vessie died almost a year to the day before I was born.
My father’s family is a little more fleshed out, but again… mainly incidental anecdotes… nothing at all like a family history. My maternal grandmother is a vague image, she died in 1949 after a hard and troublesome life. My grandfather Otis was the only grandparent I ever knew and I had a close, loving relationship with him until he died in 1971. Like my mother’s family, my dad’s family were fundamentally dirt farmers, though in a less fertile part of the state, and by the Time Otis was a man they’d basically lost all their land and most of their money. Otis, managed to raise a dozen kids, half of those during the depression and mostly with no wife. He was primarily a woodsman, with a phenomenal knowledge of trees, but during the hard times he did everything from working in the Bonne Terre Mines to working on the construction of Highway 61 to playing harmonica and calling square dances.
Here’s the thing… none of these people had much education. The lives they lived and the times in which they lived them didn’t really require much beyond reading, writing and a bit of math. Vessie apparently made a pretty good living farming and working the barges… he raised 8 kids and they all made it through high school, which in those days was a pretty substantial education for country folk. Otis wasn’t doing so well, and his kids had varying amounts of education… my dad, despite constant pressure to drop out and go to work to help support the family, made it though all the grades in the one room schoolhouse he attended, which included high school. He even got accepted to Washington University at one point, but couldn’t afford it despite the tuition being paid. In the post-War prosperity when folks with high school educations could get reasonably good jobs, my mom and dad went to work in factories… later, they both started their own businesses, home repair for my dad and daycare for my mom. For working class folk, they were reasonably comfortable.
My sister and I grew up in relative luxury compared to out recent ancestors and we showed all the qualities of growing up in such a state… we had free education and every opportunity to take advantage of it but really didn’t. My sister stopped after high school, I went on to a couple of years of college, mainly because I wanted to put off going to work, and became disenchanted with it in the middle of the second year and spent my Time plating cards in the student union. Before the second year was over I was working in the factories. I tried college a couple of more times after that, but never stuck with it… never managed to get a degree. As a result, my life was filled with bullshit, dead end jobs and hard damned work. My current job was my salvation, but I can’t say I planned on it or worked to get it… it sort of happened.
My dad has a love of books, a love which he passed on to me and I, when I became a parent hoped to pass on to my son. Sherry and I consciously raised Eric in a house where books and reading were valued and education, however it came, had an intrinsic value. We fought like wild dogs with the Byzantine idiocy of the St Louis school system to make sure our son had access to the best it could offer and Eric worked his ass off to qualify for it. It came to open warfare to get him into Metro High, the city’s flagship school… and the state’s for that matter. Once the dust settled it was obvious to everybody that he belonged there and he thrived on it. Graduating from high school, he went on to Truman State where he has become not only a scholar, but a man.
Yesterday Sherry, my dad and I drove up to Kirksville for the Commencement. Like all the other proud parents in the stands we eagerly watched for our son to enter the field and take his seat among his peers (a process made easier by all that hair!). We yelled like maniacs when his name was called and he became the first person in my family to ever graduate college. I looked over and Sherry had tears in her eyes. I was pretty damned close myself. I was never more proud of any human being in my life than I am of him now.
One day last week while I was telling someone (I don’t know who, I told everybody) that I was going up to Kirksville Saturday to see my son graduate, I was asked if I ever thought this day would come. I looked them straight in the eye and spoke without reservation or hesitation… Hell yes! I always knew it would come.
Damn… I’m starting to tear up now… Love you, son.
My knowledge of my ancestors is pretty slim, really. My mother’s family were dirt farmers and river men and they apparently lead pretty uneventful lives. My maternal grandmother died when my mother was 12 years old and she is almost unknown to me. Vessie, my mom’s father I know only from mental snapshots… short stories that don’t share enough connectivity to make a whole story… and most of those stories are from the period after my mother and father met. Vessie died almost a year to the day before I was born.
My father’s family is a little more fleshed out, but again… mainly incidental anecdotes… nothing at all like a family history. My maternal grandmother is a vague image, she died in 1949 after a hard and troublesome life. My grandfather Otis was the only grandparent I ever knew and I had a close, loving relationship with him until he died in 1971. Like my mother’s family, my dad’s family were fundamentally dirt farmers, though in a less fertile part of the state, and by the Time Otis was a man they’d basically lost all their land and most of their money. Otis, managed to raise a dozen kids, half of those during the depression and mostly with no wife. He was primarily a woodsman, with a phenomenal knowledge of trees, but during the hard times he did everything from working in the Bonne Terre Mines to working on the construction of Highway 61 to playing harmonica and calling square dances.
Here’s the thing… none of these people had much education. The lives they lived and the times in which they lived them didn’t really require much beyond reading, writing and a bit of math. Vessie apparently made a pretty good living farming and working the barges… he raised 8 kids and they all made it through high school, which in those days was a pretty substantial education for country folk. Otis wasn’t doing so well, and his kids had varying amounts of education… my dad, despite constant pressure to drop out and go to work to help support the family, made it though all the grades in the one room schoolhouse he attended, which included high school. He even got accepted to Washington University at one point, but couldn’t afford it despite the tuition being paid. In the post-War prosperity when folks with high school educations could get reasonably good jobs, my mom and dad went to work in factories… later, they both started their own businesses, home repair for my dad and daycare for my mom. For working class folk, they were reasonably comfortable.
My sister and I grew up in relative luxury compared to out recent ancestors and we showed all the qualities of growing up in such a state… we had free education and every opportunity to take advantage of it but really didn’t. My sister stopped after high school, I went on to a couple of years of college, mainly because I wanted to put off going to work, and became disenchanted with it in the middle of the second year and spent my Time plating cards in the student union. Before the second year was over I was working in the factories. I tried college a couple of more times after that, but never stuck with it… never managed to get a degree. As a result, my life was filled with bullshit, dead end jobs and hard damned work. My current job was my salvation, but I can’t say I planned on it or worked to get it… it sort of happened.
My dad has a love of books, a love which he passed on to me and I, when I became a parent hoped to pass on to my son. Sherry and I consciously raised Eric in a house where books and reading were valued and education, however it came, had an intrinsic value. We fought like wild dogs with the Byzantine idiocy of the St Louis school system to make sure our son had access to the best it could offer and Eric worked his ass off to qualify for it. It came to open warfare to get him into Metro High, the city’s flagship school… and the state’s for that matter. Once the dust settled it was obvious to everybody that he belonged there and he thrived on it. Graduating from high school, he went on to Truman State where he has become not only a scholar, but a man.
Yesterday Sherry, my dad and I drove up to Kirksville for the Commencement. Like all the other proud parents in the stands we eagerly watched for our son to enter the field and take his seat among his peers (a process made easier by all that hair!). We yelled like maniacs when his name was called and he became the first person in my family to ever graduate college. I looked over and Sherry had tears in her eyes. I was pretty damned close myself. I was never more proud of any human being in my life than I am of him now.
One day last week while I was telling someone (I don’t know who, I told everybody) that I was going up to Kirksville Saturday to see my son graduate, I was asked if I ever thought this day would come. I looked them straight in the eye and spoke without reservation or hesitation… Hell yes! I always knew it would come.
Damn… I’m starting to tear up now… Love you, son.
