By Staff
Recently old Charlie got a call from a man in Hartford asking if I was the man who had written an article for the Northern Indiana Historical Society that was published in the South Bend Tribune paper on Jan. 12, 1992.
I said yes, I wrote about the old stage called the Cannon Ball express that my grandfather and my great-grandfather drove many years ago.
He said I'm Mike Pomeroy and I'm your sixth cousin twice removed. He said he moved back to Hartford and was going through some of his mother's things when he found the article I had written.
He seems to be quite a computer bug and he has sent me a lot of printouts about my Laporte side of my family going way, way back.
He has come up with a lot of information that was new to me. He sent me a real neat picture of four of the Laportes, including my grandpa Johnson, my great-grandad William James Laporte, both of whom drove the old Cannon Ball Express between Dowagiac and Cassopolis.
This is the second time I found out that someone who used to live in Dowagiac, Don Laporte who I remember when we went to the Oak Street school, but I never knew he was related to me in a distant way.
He had been here to see me when he was up from Florida on a visit and brought his laptop computer in and showed me and later sent me some printouts.
See, even at age 79, you can still learn things.
Changes. Changes. Changes.
In all my life until recently did I ever recall dogs having their nails trimmed. Now they are done by groomers, a nice business that has really grown. Me being a on the slow side, there probably were groomers that cut the nails of the dogs of rich people with their fancy dogs.
Another thing back in my day was one's pet lived on table scraps and you know I don't remember seeing dogs that had a problem of being fat.
We have friends who have to feed their dogs a special diet from the vet because the little stinkers are overweight.
Now I see they even have an ad on TV where you can buy an animal nail trimmer that won't hurt the dog or cat and you can do the job yourself.
Some people call them pie plates, to me they were always pie tins. My wife said small plates, just about big enough to hold a piece of pie are also called pie plates.
Not too long ago we had to get gas at a station. As I was standing there filling the tank (God bless someone for the low price now) looked up on the power line and saw a lot of fairly large black colored birds in a row, what came to my mind was four and 20 blackbirds.
But when I counted them there was only a total of 23 darn it.
Now that the old water works building on Chestnut Street has seen its demise and we will never get to hear the old whistle they used to blow for the fire alarm system years ago. I think at one time they used to blow it at 9 p.m. as a curfew warning, but I may be dreaming and I do sometimes.
I wish all my readers a happy and healthy New Year in 2009.
E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.