As your getting older you think back
on your life. I have always been told to
keep a journal, sometimes I do really well and then there is now where I haven’t
written anything for months. Let’s face it;
my memory isn’t all it used to be.
When you look at the above picture you see an old building and truck with a mud puddle out front. What I see in my story is my parent’s first hardware store in the early 50’s. The old truck we called Dinky Poo, I would love to ride in it with Dad, and I spent a great deal of time in that old truck, it was like family. The door to the shop had a hole cut in the bottom of it later on for our dog Junior to go in and out, Dad had to enlarge it once because Junior got fat and was stuck in the door. Once Dad gave him away and he walked around 80 miles in the dead of winter and came home, it took him close to three weeks, Dad never gave him away again. The pipe sticking out of the old building was to an old pot belly stove that kept the shop warm in the cold winters. I could go on and on.
When you look at the above picture you see an old building and truck with a mud puddle out front. What I see in my story is my parent’s first hardware store in the early 50’s. The old truck we called Dinky Poo, I would love to ride in it with Dad, and I spent a great deal of time in that old truck, it was like family. The door to the shop had a hole cut in the bottom of it later on for our dog Junior to go in and out, Dad had to enlarge it once because Junior got fat and was stuck in the door. Once Dad gave him away and he walked around 80 miles in the dead of winter and came home, it took him close to three weeks, Dad never gave him away again. The pipe sticking out of the old building was to an old pot belly stove that kept the shop warm in the cold winters. I could go on and on.
After my Grandmother died I went
looking for her history. She wrote her
Dad and Mothers history but I only found a paragraph of one she had written on
herself. As far as I know she never
wrote her own history.
I have always thought to myself who
would want to know about me? Then I
remind myself that I want to know about my ancestors, I would love to read
about them, about their thoughts and feelings as they went through their
journey in life.
Over the years I have read various
books on writing your personal history, even bought a few of the fill in the blank books, but the one suggestion for you is this one.
Get a three ring binder, it doesn’t
have to be fancy, even one you would take to school with lined paper in
it. You then go and start writing titles
on each page, for example “First Day of School” on one page “Play in Grade
School” on another page “First Garden” on another page, “The Drive In Theater”
on another. You get the picture, write
things you want to write about and put the pages back in your folder. As you think of a title start a new
page.
The next step is to pull out a page
and write a story about your memory then put it back in your binder. When I started doing this I didn’t have many
things I could think of, but the more I did this the more I thought of things
to write about.
I don’t know about you, but to read I
was born on this day and grew up and got married and had kids then grew old
doesn’t sound very interesting to me. If
anyone ever wants to know about me, I would rather they really know about me in
my stories. You aren’t writing your
history, you are writing your story.
If you write your story this way you
will find you won’t feel the pressure of having to do it, but will enjoy each memory and truly put
yourself into it.
Try it; let me know how it goes.
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