By Staff
I saw in the paper where the Council on Aging is having a workshop on how to write one's autobiography.
Quite a few years ago a good friend of mine who I grew up with wrote his life story. He sent it to me to read.
He suggested to me that I do it also. Well, I didn't, but I mentioned the idea to a classmate friend of mine and she said sounds like a good idea and latched onto it.
She sat down and did her life story and sent it to me.
I found these two life stories of my friends so very interesting I decided to do my life also.
One of my friend's life story was seven pages and the other was 17.
I managed to come up with 16 pages, but later on I thought of at least another six pages that later came to mind.
As folks know, I have a very good memory going back to the 1930s.
My 16 pages were written in long hand on a lined legal pad, which is how I write my column in the paper.
I sent my life story to both of my friends, and my classmate friend in Grand Rapids, who is a sweetheart of a girl, went to her computer and made me a nice printed copy of my life I had handwritten.
She also told me that reading it, some of it brought a tear to her eye.
We three were all born in what you might call the highlight of the Great Depression.
Boy, the 1930s were a rough time. I'm sure the people at the Council on Aging are going to be glad they took the time to take on this project.
My child-bride wife said do you know you more or less wrote 540 pages of your life in your book.
I guess she is half right, come to think of it.
As I've mentioned before, how much I enjoy it when folks bring me old things to look at.
The other day one of my reader friends lent me her grandmother's very, very old autograph book that was signed by her friends in 1883 and 1884.
It was a little cloth-covered, three-inch by five-inch book with a nice design on the cover.
I really enjoyed some of the cute little sayings written before they signed the book with their name.
Here are a few of them:
Long may you live
Happy may you be
When you get married
Come and see me.
When you get married
and sitting at ease
Remember I'm single
and doing as I please.
Upon this page so pure and white
I find a place my name to write.
– your teacher
Here is one I liked:
Taller the pine, thinner the bark
Fairer the lady, harder to spark.
The penmanship was quite fancy on a lot of the pages.
It had to be written by one of those old steel pens that you dipped in an inkwell.
These were the ones that came after those old quill pens, and before the old fountain pens with a rubber bladder which you don't see anymore.
I wonder what will come next after ballpoint pens?
Progress, progress, progress.
E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com