Me, I enjoy all his input!

He adds flavor!

I also am one that truly enjoys Joyfuls' trips down memory lane as well as many of his insightful thoughts. He, and many of us older folks, really should write our "stories" for our kids. I keep promising. Nanny

Nanny98, you'd better get busy! I bought a "Grandmother Remembers" book for my grandma to fill out when she was in her 90's. It had lots of questions and spaces for answers and photos and stuff. If she didn't especially like a particular question, she'd just write down other memories and thoughts. There was plenty of space in the book. Grandma passed away 2 years ago at 103 and that book is so precious to me and will be passed down the family tree for ages. Get busy, please! :)

Better yet, get a tape recorder and tapes. Sit down and talk to your elder relatives, get family reminiscences going at reunions or family dinners. The stories can be transcribed later, and many people feel that their stories aren't important enough to be written, but everyone loves to talk!

Ole Joyful is just that....ole joyful. Always brings a smile to my face.

I've thought of writing an autobiography for my family. I was born in 1952, I have so many memories. I grew up in a boading house. My Grandmother's husband died young and to support herself and my mother (her daughter) , Grandma took in boarders. Most were nurses and interns from a nearby city hospital. I remember our last boarder, he owned a funeral parlor. I could tell so many stories, they are all true. The things I've seen, the people I've knowm. Family "secrets".

This topic is near and dear to my heart... As the family genealogist or "Keeper of the Tree" as I prefer to call myself.. I wish I had had the wisdom to sit down with grandparents when they were still alive and ask them about their family...I am lucky enough to have a lot of old pictures that were labeled, two old family bibles, one from 1758 and one from 1820 with family information written inside and have been lucky enough to be able to find County History books with my family in them BUT all of this is nothing like hearing it directly from a living descendant. If only I had sat down and talked with my grandpa I could of heard the story from him about his mother.. how her mother's brothers took her dad out in the swamp and killed him because they did not want their sister married to a Confederate and how her family did not want her child to have the name of a Confederate soldier so they took her and gave them their surname..I also could of learned who his grandpa was on his father's side of the family, that is a dead end for me... even professional and paid genealogists have not been able to find that out...
All of this seems so unimportant when you are young but as I wrote in my book when I finished it after 7 years.

"One day you will wake up and realize there is more of your life behind you then in front of you and want to know the story of your family"

If you have Grandparents, Aunts, Great Aunts... Uncles etc... still living... pleae sit down and have them tell you what they know, one day you just might be glad you did.
Debbie...

Yep, ole joyful is quite the philosopher, and his writing is always helpful and often humorous.

This thread is timely in that it suggests that we all should be recording our life stories. I wish I had listened better and asked more questions of my parents about their life history.

When I got my first PC, I learned enough HTML to put up a web site with what I remember about my earlier life.

Due to health problems I stopped working on it and just this past week have gone back to it and I'm seeing many grammatical and punctuation errors which I will be correcting. Also, there are so many browsers now, pages don't always render properly.

Take a look; you might be inspired to begin writing your stories.

Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: My Reading Room

I gave a book to my Dad when he moved in with us and asked him to write in it, but he never did.Sure wish he had. But I have my Aunt and Uncle who are sharing memories with me.My Mom was a great writer and she wrote poems and diaries so I have those memories of her.

I hope Joyful checks in here soon! And more stories, please!

I have a Journal Jar that has lots of questions on little slips of paper in it - You pull one question out and tape it to the top page of one of those Blank Books and then write the answer underneath it.

Before long you have an entire book written and the Jar is emptied!

I was going to do it Daily, but that didn't work well...since then I just leave the jar sitting out where I can see it and answer a question as I feel like writing something.

Later,

Nola Anne

I did recieve a lovely 8X10 book "The Story of a Lifetime" from my children last Christmas and I have started to answer those questions...they definetly help bring up subjects I possibly would not have thought. Also, PLEASE "back-up" or put on disks/dvds your memories that you might have begun to write on your computer. I just lost (I think) many, many writings. I did have them backed up, but have not found a way to unlock that system. Still trying. Nanny

I just posted a photo of my Journal Jar if anyone's interested...Nola Anne

A number of times at the gathering at the funeral home on the eve prior to a funeral, I've heard people say, "It seems to me that about the only times that our family gets together is for a wedding or a funeral, and that's a shame".

I've told a number of them that our family (Dad's side), that immigrated 163 years ago, has held a family reunion for over 100 years, with usually about 110 attending on a Saturday in June. There's a potluck picnic "lunch", if you can call it that, for there's a great variety of food (and enough to feed about twice that number). We had over 400 come to the 100th anniversay, just over 10 years ago: what a celebration that was, that went on for two days!

I'd recommend something like that for other families. Some have said that they thought that to be a good idea ... that they just might get something like that going.

Mom's family started such a project about 1980 and meet every three years. Two summers ago we met at my retired brother's farm in Saskatchewan, and something around 75 spent a weekend there, with trailers, mobile homes, etc. Sister in law and a cousin arranged a tote bag, with a picture of a prairie village, including grain elevators, stitched to one side. One cousin has put together a family tree, including pictures of about 80% of the people, I think - it covered about half of one wall of brother's garage.

I haven't written anything, but son has sat me down a couple of times to make a short recording of a couple of audio snapshots of my past.

Such memories will probably be of less value in our situation than for many, as I have no grandkids - I'm getting near the end of the line, of our branch of the family tree, it seems.

Dad's family printed a history, including family tree, on the hundredth anniversary of our immigration, and when I was president about 40 years ago, I plotted it all out on one sheet of paper. I thought that it had disappeared, but someone brought it to a picnic a few years back and there has been some effort made to update it. They did another history, including family tree, for the hundredth reunion a few years ago.

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought, "Oh! Oh! ... What kind of mischief have I been up to, this time?".

Some of you may recall one of my sayings around here - smile at half of the people that you meet on the street, etc. ...

... they'll wonder what you've been up to".

I hope that you all have a great weekend.

Drat! My computer's non-operational ... again.

ole joyful