Nothing Much

I was sitting here tonight, watching the Tonight Show, and suddenly it dawned on me! I'm behind in my posting! More importantly, I neglected to post the Bushism of the day for Wednesday and here it is now, Thursday already!

Geez, where does the time go? Just flies right on by us, doesn't it?

Anyway - for those of you who enjoy these little jabs at "Dubya" I'll give you a double treat now - one for Wednesday and one for today, Thursday, January 18th. Then I'll move on to other unimportant things. For those of you who happen to like Bush, I do apologize. But, I just can't resist these quotes from him - so silly, so stupid, and ok, I love them! I know, I have a weird, warped sense of humor I guess. Blame it on years of associating with strange truck drivers, maybe.

"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" (Concord, New Hampshire; January 29, 2000) (quote for January 17, 2007)

and - for January 18, 2007
"I want to remind you all that in order to fight and win the war, it requires an expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they're well paid, well trained, well equipped." (Washington, D.C.; December 15, 2003)

And, that's it!

I suppose one reason I am late posting for Wednesday - early for Thursday - whatever - is I really didn't have much of anything going on today to get into and talk about. Pretty quiet around the house.

Well, except for my sleep patterns that it! Last night, I went to bed around midnight, fell asleep fairly quickly too, but almost as if they have an alarm clock in my body, shortly after 4 a.m., they were back. Darned shingles alarm went off and woke me up. I lucked out this time and managed to get them to calm down enough just by massaging the muscles in my side where they were acting up and got back to sleep till about 6 a.m. when I was awakened by a noise behind my bed.

Yeah, behind my bed! Now depending on how you look at the layout in my bedroom, that's fairly easy to explain - something behind my bed. But then too, I don't have my bedroom furniture exactly laid out in the most common "design" shall we say, so maybe then it is a bit unusual.

I have the head of my bed situated so there is a pathway between my bed and dresser. The foot of the bed is under the windows, against the wall. And the noise I heard moving behind my bed at 6 am. just happened to be Miss Maya, my little princess three-year-old granddaughter!

What was unusual was for her to be up and wandering about in my room at that hour though. I stumbled out of bed, didn't see any light on in the dining room and only the light over the sink in the kitchen burning, didn't hear any noise of anyone else being up either. When I finally woke up enough to focus my eyes into the kitchen, there sat my daughter at the counter reading the book I got her for Christmas.

Kind of dumbfounded still, I asked her what the heck she was doing up at that hour. And, by the tone of her voice when she told me she'd been up since 4 a.m. and a nod in the direction of Miss Maya, as she said "with HER!" I knew this wasn't a happy camper sitting there before me.

I asked if she had made a pot of coffee and she said no, she hadn't figured on still being up at this hour but she guessed maybe since it was now 6 a.m., she should or could probably do that. Which she did and which I enjoyed the fruits of her labors immensely then!

Other than that, the day proceeded in a fairly calm manner. No major problems, no major exciting events - pretty much a very blah day really!

However, because I have been really neglectful for oh, maybe about two months now of my "research" on the local towns here and history of them and former residents, etc., I decided since things were pretty quiet I would try to get back to work on that. And I did that. So as of this time tonight (or this morning) I have now gone through old Clearfield Progress reports thru May 11, 1964! Yippy skippy! (Actually, I haven't truly gone through ALL the Progress papers from 1913 to 1964 (May 11, to be precise) because there are several years in which the database I am using is missing issues of The Progress. Mainly the War years - 1942-1945. Unfortunately there, I really will need to research those issues somehow - probably will have to breakdown some day, leave the house (and nicotine behind) and head to the library over in Clearfield to see if they have copies there of those particular years so I can research them. I really want to see if there is anything in any of those War years issues pertaining to a cousin of my Mom's who was killed in France or of a man from home here who was missing in action for a considerable period of time. You might know, two events I really wanted to find data about and those YEARS are not in the database! Figures!

The story of the guy missing in action is one that very much intrigues me. He is the uncle of one of my closest friends and I never knew until I started doing this research that he was ever missing in action. Not till about a year ago that is when I came across in one of the few issues on the database during the period between 1942 and 1945 of when some top honcho with the Armed Services came to the village to present a medal -for my friend's uncle - to her grandfather.

This summer, I met this gentleman and three of his daughters when they came to town for a day to visit with his two nieces living here. I had asked the one daughter, who I had just begun to correspond with via e-mail if perhaps her sisters could talk to their Dad and jot down his thoughts, memories about that experience and have the daughters e-mail it to me. I could give them questions perhaps to ask him and let them get his answers. He agreed that he would be willing to talk to them or to me about this but unfortunately, he lives in Cleveland - a 4-hour drive from here and I can't zip around that much to get this information.

The crux of the story, if I remember it correctly though, is that he was a bombadier and the plane was shot down over France. He was injured in the crash - both shoulders broken and his parachute was dragging behind him - leaving a pretty obvious marker as to his location - but somehow he managed to drag himself to some place to hide and some French underground people tracked him down and took him into their homes, hiding him until he healed enough that they could assist him in getting across the border to Spain and make his way eventually to a base and back to England.

During his time in France, with the family who cared for him, he learned a good bit of the French Language and when they escorted him to the mountain range separating Spain and France, he had to walk over those mountains. One comment he has made about that trek was it was a good thing he was raised in the country, used to running about in his bare feet too, just used to walking a lot as well, because that was one thing he felt saved him.

I find stories like this - especially when it involves someone I know or at least am very familiar with the family - extremely interesting. I also find the story of this man really awesome though. Because, when he actually made it HOME to this little village, his father still did not know he had made it back to England much less to the States and as he was walking down the street (the street where I now live) towards his family's home, his father was out in the yard either mowing grass or raking and out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone walking, carrying a backpack and he heard the man walking whistling. THen, he stopped what he was doing and looked again --long and hard this time - and realized it was his son who had been reported many months I guess before to being missing in action. The father was so overcome, he fainted on the spot!

I vaguely remember this elderly man - the father - my friend's grandfather. I think I was 5 maybe 6 years old when he died. And, what I remember of him, he was short, rather chunky in build. And also, he -in my memory - was a quiet man, not all that prone anyway to chit-chat with little kids at any rate. But, knowing many of this particular family, I can well imagine him being completely overcome by the shock of seeing his son, thought possibly to be lost completely to him - the baby of the family - walking towards him.

I probably would do the same thing if it were me under the same circumstances.

How do you think you would handle a shock like that?

Nite now.