November 22nd an Important Day in History

It is the 22nd of November 2013. Many will spend the day thinking about what happened on November 22, 1963. It was a day that changed America. How we saw the world. I am focused on a different November 22nd. It was November 22, 1981. It is the day our youngest son John was born. You might wonder if he was named after John F. Kennedy. It had nothing to do with his name, it was just a coincidence. It is a family name. His uncle, grandfather, great grandfather, great great grandfather and beyond were all named John. Since my brothers had no sons we named him John. He has three girls so he named his youngest daughter Johnnie.

John and Johnnie

John

The last picture is of John and a friend of mine Thomas (Sodbuster) O'Connor. Tom was helping John out in this picture from 1991 when John was 10. We lived on the farm and John was raising cattle or hogs at the time and Tom was assisting with transportation. John took care of his own livestock, paid the bills for feed and handled his venture well. He had a state ID card and a checking account. We were with him at the mall one time and he had to come get one of us because a store wouldn't believe he had his own checking account. We convinced them that he could afford the gift he was trying to buy his mom.

So today is one of those days where you feel kinda old. Your youngest child is in his 30's and has children as old as he is in the last picture. Where did the time go? So many things that could have been done that weren't. So many things that were done that maybe shouldn't have been. Neither of those things can be changed. All that can be hoped for at this time is that somehow here or there as we moved through those years we did something to change things for the better. Touched and changed someone's life for the better. While today's post is about this child, our youngest, we are proud of all three of our children and the adults they have grown up to be.

So while most today will dwell on the death of a John that changed America. I will be thinking about the birth of a John who changed my life. Who made it better, richer and fuller than I could have imagined 32 years ago. Happy birthday!

Things I Wonder About

 

This picture was taken in the summer of 1968. I would have been 14 years old at the time. I'm the guy standing off to the left side of the photograph. Going to the right- away from me is my Grandpa John, my Mom Anna, my Grandma Harriet, my younger brother David, my older brother Jay and my Mom's brother my Uncle Johnny. We are standing at the entrance to the Wolf Covered Bridge in Knox County, Illinois. Many years later the bridge was burned by vandals. It was later rebuilt as a wooden covered bridge in the image of the original shown here. I have no use for reproduction history. The original is gone and with it the craftsmanship and labor of the original builders. It is like a copy of the Mona Lisa. Nice painting but it does not have the significance or value of the original.

I have been scanning hundreds of photographs over the course of the past few weeks. It is my attempt to get my family's history straight in my head. My wife says that no one but me will care about what I am doing. That our children will not care about relatives they never knew. She may be right. It doesn't matter. I care about those people and they will all live in my head for as long as I am here. Shadows of a past I cannot fully know and an echo of lives that have impacted mine in ways I cannot understand or fully appreciate. I look at them to learn about them. Moments of time caught on film that may give me a hint of what they thought and felt. Letters they left behind, or journals, that give me a clues about their thoughts, hopes, feelings, life experiences.

I keep coming back to this picture. It was here, looking at this image 45 years after it was taken that I realized something about myself. You can see by the length of time that has passed that I am a slow learner. It was something I had seen in many other pictures but noticed when I saw this one. The family is grouped together. I am off a bit to the side. In the picture but not a part of the group. Standing away and apart from my brothers. When I look at pictures this is consistently the case. My brothers now farm together. They attended and graduated from the University of Illinois. They were members of the same fraternity. I graduated from Western Illinois University and was as they often stated a G.D.I. (God Damned Independent). It seems that has been the consistent feature in my life. A bit off to the side, apart from the group, looking for my place to fit in. Now I live in BFE, near the end of a dead end road. My wife and our dogs as my companions. I spent my working career learning the nature of human cruelty and knowing the evil that men can do. I am satisfied with a life apart from the hustle and confusion of the world. I watch and see how the majority of people treat each other and happily remain apart from it and them.

A New Refrigerator!

I have been absent from my blog for a while. I have been busy scanning family photographs in an attempt to get to know as many family members as possible while my mom is around to help with identification. There is very little more frustrating than having a picture of someone you think is a member of your family and no way to identify who they are. It becomes even more complicated in my case with the adoption of my father and the discovery of members of his biological family. I have some new pictures of them but they have not yet worked their way to the top of the scan pile. You will see them at some point in the future.

 I must admit that it is strange to go back and see pictures of yourself- young and vibrant, ready to venture forth into an unknown future. A moment caught in time that you no longer recall. Yet you hold the evidence of its occurance in your hand. I will share one such picture today. It is July 31, 1957. My parents won the G.E Swap contest by entering the oldest operating refrigerator in Knox County. It was originally purchased by my great grandmother Emma Sutor, when she passed in 1952 it went to my grandfather John J Sutor, and in 1957 it was in the house where I lived with my parents. I suppose I can be forgiven for not remembering this moment since I was just a little past 3 years old. I'm the young fella in front holding my mother's hand. My older brother Jay has just turned 5 and my younger brother David is one year old and being held by dad. The hair cuts look familiar since in those days dad didn't think we needed to go to the barber. His barbering skills were limited to buzz cuts so that's how we wore what hair we had.